Universal Credit

Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope Excerpts

Wednesday 9th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, this is a very large programme and the way we are doing it is quite responsive. What we have is a test and learn process. That is not just an empty phrase. It is a very large process, based on a live run-out of many tens of thousands of people, which feeds into how we build a fully digital interactive service that we are building at the same time. We will make changes to the process. That is what it is about. It would be silly to do all that work without being responsive. We learn lots of things. One of my jobs is to try to understand what we are finding out and then make those changes. There will be changes. Having said that, we announced a rollout process in December and we are, to my pleasure, managing to get it out to time with those plans. The next stages, which are towards the end of the year, are really important—moving on to families, bringing in childcare and going to that digital place. By the end of the year we will have a working test bed of how a fully interactive process will work. I am not saying it will not change after that, but I am saying that we are doing what we were planning to do.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)]

My Lords, I encourage my noble friend to redouble his efforts, as he has undertaken to do, to maintain cross-party support for this transformational programme which is so important to the future of our country. I am as impatient for implementation as anyone, but I exhort him to do this carefully—as he is doing—even if it means that the programme slips a little. It is better that it works properly than it is rushed and done wrongly. Does my noble friend agree that there is an advantage to keeping some flexibility in the funding of the scheme? Passported benefits, childcare costs and the local support services framework are all massively beneficial, and the Treasury should be persuaded to invest more money so that the programme is even more effective in future.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we are indeed trying to get that flexibility. One can look at our very intensive dialogue with the Treasury—going through point by point and milestone by milestone—in two ways. One can look at it as pretty onerous, and it is. On the other hand, it gives one a chance to look at what we should be doing next and changing it. One example is on the support system delivered locally—in the jargon, the LSSF. We were able to go to the Treasury and get more money put into that process quite recently because it could see how valuable and important that was.

Not locking everything down early and having that dialogue works. Frankly, you do not know what you are going to find out or what you are going to need to do when you have a major programme. Having that understanding from the Treasury of what we are doing and keeping it well-informed so that we can make those changes as we go along does work.