Universal Credit: Rollout

Lord Fink Excerpts

Wednesday 20th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fink (Con)]

My Lords, I had the pleasure of visiting the main south-inner-London jobcentre at Kennington Park this morning. The staff there could not have been more evangelical in their support for universal credit, and many of those who were handling legacy claims were only waiting for the time when those claims moved over to universal credit. They said that the new system had much more flexibility, that most of the cases and examples in the NAO report had already been addressed and that in fact it was already out of date because the new system was so flexible and adjustable. Can the Minister assure us that we will continue to roll out the programme, which has been so well valued by staff in the jobcentres?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott]

My response to my noble friend is: you bet we will. I called a district manager in Jobcentre Plus and asked her to tell me truthfully how things were going. She said, “It is going much better. It is agile, it is flexible and once we identify problems locally with individuals, we are solving them overnight”. My noble friend should therefore take heart that this will continue and just get better.