Universal Credit

Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope Excerpts

Thursday 16th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis. No one has done more in this important field of public policy over the years than she has. At the same time as we are discussing this important subject in the House of Lords, the House of Commons is discussing exactly the same topic. If ever there was any doubt about the importance of the subject, the conjunction of these two debates today should have significance for the Minister.

I will do a deal with the Minister: I will ditch what I was going to say, because I concur with so many of the points that have been made, as they are sensible. In return, if I give her a little more time to reply, I ask her to help me to understand three questions. The first was asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, who was right about the broken promises. I certainly feel cheated, as does she. She and I spent a lot of time working together in the exceptional Committee stage of the Welfare Reform Act 2012. We have come a long way now. We have come even further from dynamic benefits, which I signed up to; I signed up to test and learn, universal service delivered locally and in-flight corrections.

It was understood that we were going to put in a generous floor that did not just deal with work. The problem in this debate is that colleagues on the Conservative side of the House are pursuing—almost exclusively, if I can put it so pejoratively—the importance of work. That is right, but more than 1 million people who are going to move on to universal credit will never be asked to look for work, and we have to cater for them too.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, and I started back in David Donnison’s day with supplementary benefit. That was a safety net, as the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, mentioned. He made an important point because what we are missing here is the universal safety net that will need to be applied before people can even contemplate approaching the labour market. If this benefit were called “universal job search”, it would be perfect and I would support it 100%, as long as it were in place with a safety net underneath it.

I have three requests for the Minister. First, it would help me enormously if she could make a commitment—not a pledge or a manifesto commitment—saying that the Government intend, in the fullness of time, when resources allow, to put back some of the things mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, and the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake. If she said that that was the Government’s ambition, it would go some way toward dealing with an important broken promise.

Secondly, there really needs to be some practical change. Next week is a key moment. We do Budgets now only once a year, rather than once every six months. Therefore, if we do not get the resources we need—I would sign up to the package proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, and I also like the idea of the fortnightly grant, which would get over some of the short-term, immediate problems staring us in the face—the whole thing could be prejudiced. There is a danger that this becomes so toxic that we will not want anything to do with universal credit. This is a very important long-term policy for the country, so next week’s Budget is essential. If we miss that, we will not get another shot at this until a year’s time, and that will be too late.

Thirdly, I urge the Minister to go back to the Treasury—we understand her position: we are not stupid—and stress that if something serious is not done or some serious intentions are not made clear, we are in danger of risking future collapse in public confidence in this very important policy. That would not be in the interests of anyone: not the United Kingdom, not low-income families and not even those who are comfortable and have found their way early into the labour market. There is a lot at stake here. It has been a very important debate and I hope the Minister gets a chance to respond to it in good time.