Universal Credit

Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I am grateful for the noble Lord’s questions. Let me say straightaway that we have not been recalibrating anything. He will be aware that there have been a number of PQs in the past few months. There was a Written Ministerial Statement in June this year, wherein we set out very clearly that from the beginning of next year, we want to move to managed migration in a very slow and careful way. We want to be sure that we get it right, that the right systems are in place. As we also made clear to the Social Security Advisory Committee, we will not begin to introduce managed migration, which is those who are on existing benefits—the legacy system, as we call it—rather than those who are new to the benefit system who are going on to universal credit, until July next year. That has long been the case.

We are now waiting for the end of the rollout of the system into every jobcentre by the end of December this year. We are also now in receipt of some important recommendations made by the Social Security Advisory Committee as a result of our proposals to it with regard to managed migration regulations, which we hope to lay before the House in the near future. We are now considering those recommendations very seriously and I will report to this House in the very near future.

The most important answer that I must give straightaway is that a key point for the managed migration regulations, which we will bring forward, is to protect the most vulnerable. We are not halting any rollout. Our concern is to protect the most vulnerable— those who cannot work, those with severe disabilities—through the severe disability premium and careful full transitional protection through migration on to universal credit.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for repeating the Statement. I concur with her tribute to Patricia Hollis. She was an integral part in the creation of this legislation and delivered a complete masterclass in parliamentary scrutiny in the 2012 committee which I was privileged to share with her. She will be missed.

Can I confirm that there will be no delay in the publication of the managed migration regulations and that the Social Security Advisory Committee report will be published in due time? There should be no delay in either of those two things. Some of us are a little surprised that the recent controversy about the cuts has suddenly blown up, because it has been painfully obvious since 2012 that a moment would come when these things would bite and things would get really tough in terms of financial hardship for low income families.

I will make two points. First, I am now really worried about the requirement for managed migration people to have their benefits turned off and then to make their own application. We need to seriously look at these regulations to make sure that there is automaticity of transfer to universal credit, and then we can sort out the difficulties afterwards. Otherwise, hardship will be exacerbated.

The other thing I will say strongly to the Minister is that Church Action on Poverty has produced a very interesting report indicating that the safety net that was available in 2012, according to its research, has been slashed. Community care grants and crisis loans totalled more than £200 million a year, and we are now at the stage when the Government have just announced £37 million as the total amount of money for universal support across the country. Frankly that is not enough to prevent hardship occurring in ways that will hurt families in the future. The House will need to turn its attention to these things during consideration of the managed migration regulations.

[Baroness Buscombe]

I thank the noble Lord and say straightaway that there will be no delay to the publication. Indeed, because we have to see these regulations on the statute book by the end of this year, it is very important to ensure that they are laid shortly and that we can debate them in your Lordships’ House. We very much hope that, unlike the package of £1.5 billion in extra support for universal credit that was introduced in another place following the Budget last autumn, the managed migration regulations will not be rejected, as the package was last autumn.

It is important to remember that we introduced a package that made advance payments quicker and easier for people to access. They could have a 100% advance up front for their first month’s claim, with no interest to repay for 12 months. We scrapped the seven-day waiting period and introduced a two-week run-on for people receiving housing benefit, with a cash payment that was not repayable. We are helping more than 500,000 people by protecting severe disability premiums.

That package was rejected in another place. Let us hope that this managed migration package will be supported in another place and in your Lordships’ House, because we want to protect the severely disabled, those with health conditions and those who genuinely need our support. We, too, are surprised by the recent controversy, because we are trying to do the right thing to support the right people. Benefits will not be turned off. We will be very careful to ensure that there is a transfer. That is why we will introduce the system slowly and carefully. We are using six months of next year to try to get this right.