Universal Credit Project Assessment Reviews
Debate between Lucy Frazer and Neil Gray(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Lucy Frazer (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
Earlier this year, having tabled an emergency motion, the shadow Leader of the House argued passionately for more Opposition day debates. She highlighted at least four topics that she felt needed urgent debate, including social security and the personal independence payment, NHS nursing numbers, the Swansea tidal lagoon, and higher education regulations. Since she made that speech four months ago, only two of those topics have been raised by Labour Members in Opposition day motions. Instead, they have used their motions as a procedural tool to seek access to documents from the Government, but I want to raise the question of whether that is the appropriate route for such requests. The Secretary of State has acceded to the request in today’s motion—I welcome that disclosure—but he made it clear that this was an exceptional case. A five-hour Opposition day debate is not, in fact, the appropriate route to make such a request, and let me explain why that is the case.
Lucy Frazer
I will make some progress for the moment.
By means of today’s motion, the Opposition seek the disclosure of various documents to a Select Committee. There is a procedure whereby Select Committees can ask for such documents themselves under Standing Orders. When I asked the Library last night whether there was any record of the Work and Pensions Committee having asked for these documents, I was told that there was no such record. If there had been such a request, there might have been the opportunity for a discussion between the Chairman of the Committee and the Secretary of State about the basis of the request and the use to which the documents might be put—the very issues that have been raised in this debate.
Raising such matters can be achieved in various ways, including through written and oral parliamentary questions, urgent questions and debates. Again, I asked the Library whether the Opposition had availed themselves of any of those procedures with regard to this request. The only record that the Library had of any such request related to one parliamentary question tabled three years—two Parliaments—ago. In this Parliament, we have had six debates on universal credit, as well as two ministerial statements and one urgent question. On none of those occasions has the relevance of these documents been raised, and nor have they been asked for. If it were in the public interest urgently to disclose the documents, I would have expected Labour Members to have used one of those routes to request them through official channels over the course of this Parliament, but they have not done so. This is the first time the matter has been raised in this Parliament.
My question is whether it is appropriate to use an important procedure of this House to require the Government to produce documents when no prior official request has been made to obtain them through the usual procedures that are available to hold the Government to account. Is it appropriate to request important documents from the Government for the first time in a Opposition day motion when the contents of that motion were not known by the Government until yesterday?
Universal Credit Roll-out
Debate between Lucy Frazer and Neil Gray(6 years, 6 months ago)
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Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to debate universal credit again today, and well done to the shadow Work and Pensions Secretary for securing today’s debate.
In my two and a half years in this place, I have become accustomed to some big, historic events happening, such is the nature of the era of politics we are living through right now. Last Wednesday, we witnessed something very rare: not only a Government losing an Opposition day motion, the first time that has happened for over 40 years, but a Government refusing to concede an inch to try to win the vote and Mr Speaker giving as close to a rebuke as is possible for the Chair to give to those on the Government Benches.
I pay tribute to you, Mr Speaker, in that regard. I do not believe the Government would have had any intention of respecting last week’s debate, last week’s vote, or indeed the conventions of this House, were it not for you challenging their behaviour in such a way. The statement from the Leader of House at business questions on Thursday was apparently to be the sum total of the Government’s response to the defeat. It gave no indication of when the Secretary of State would return to the House following the debate, nor did she say which areas of concern the Government were looking to act on. The Government’s behaviour last week encapsulated perfectly their approach to difficult decisions, whether they be difficult because of divisions within the Cabinet, divisions within the Conservative party or divisions among our constituents.
Either way, this is a Government paralysed by fear, indecision and a complete lack of strategic direction, a Government desperate to deflect, defer and delay. I say that because they have basically accepted they need to do something in key areas that are completely undermining universal credit, but rather than accept a partial solution, offered to them on a plate by a group of Tory Back Benchers ahead of the debate last week, they deflected and deferred, caught up in indecision. They threw up red herrings on the telephone charges but refused to do anything substantive in the key policy areas. Their every move is a desperate calculation to fight the fires of that particular day. Strong leadership would have seen action last week; strong leadership would have accepted the parliamentary arithmetic and the mood of the House and of our constituents, and would have accepted the need to act.
Last week, we saw the desperate weakness of a Government unwilling to defend their flagship social security policy in the Lobbies, in what must be a near unprecedented scenario. They completely misread the House. They had no idea—or decided to ignore the fact—that the main Opposition parties were working together to force a vote on Wednesday night. They completely misread the strength of feeling in the House against universal credit in its current form and the way that you, Mr Speaker, would react to that defeat and the Government’s sleekit abstention. In doing so, they showed a disrespect for Parliament. They thought they could wriggle out of an embarrassing defeat by abstaining, but instead they had to contend with a defeat and an embarrassing rebuke from the Chair. Even now, after the Government have been dragged to the House, we still get nothing.
I feel for the Minister, who has been forced to substitute for the Secretary of State, because he has been asked today to defend the indefensible. I am hoping that the events of the last week will have offered some steel to those on the Government Back Benches who pushed hard for reform but accepted the three-line Whip to abstain. This is a Government on the run. Now is the time to force home the changes we have all been pushing for: fixing the six-week wait, fixing the advance payment being a loan, fixing the monthly payments. All of these would be a start, but the biggest win would be for the Government to acknowledge the glaringly obvious—the evidence in front of their eyes—and admit that universal credit as it stands is failing those it should be helping.
Lucy Frazer
My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) put a very good question to the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) when he asked whether she anticipated that the overall pot would increase. She said she would come to that, but she did not—I twice tried to intervene because she did not come to it, but she did not take my interventions. What is the SNP’s position on that?
Universal Credit Roll-out
Debate between Lucy Frazer and Neil Gray(6 years, 6 months ago)
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Neil Gray
Yes, absolutely. The Trussell Trust has reported a 17% rise in food bank aid in areas in which universal credit has been rolled out, which is double the year-on-year rise in the rest of the UK. There is, therefore, a direct correlation between the roll-out of universal credit in its current form and people living in food poverty. That cannot and should not be ignored. Citizens Advice in East Lothian, where UC has been rolled out, says that more than half its clients on UC are £45 per week worse off. The third of clients who are better off are up only 34p a week. Citizens Advice Scotland says that rent arrears are up 15% in UC areas, compared with a 2% drop everywhere else in Scotland. The DWP’s own figures show that one in four UC claimants wait longer than six weeks—some of them up to 10 weeks—to receive a payment.
The SNP has been warning about these issues for years. My hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) met the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell), who was then the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, on 14 March 2013. My hon. Friend was, at the time, the leader of the Highland Council, which was one of the first areas for roll-out. Nothing has been done. The warnings from Highland have been ignored, despite the roll-out being designed to allow improvements to be made as it progressed.
Where universal credit is currently in operation, rent arrears have spiked, because housing benefit is no longer paid directly to the landlord and people are not getting their money on time. Food bank need has grown because of the minimum six-week wait for payment. In-work poverty is rising as new work benefits start to become sanctionable, and the incentive to work is removed by the cuts to work allowances.
Of course, the DWP has claimed, and will claim, that universal credit is motivating people into work, but that is not true on the scale that it would wish us to believe from its rhetoric. The DWP’s own figures show that for the 2% of jobcentres with UC, there has been a 3% uplift in employment rates. That accounts for all the factors that contribute to people finding or staying in work. Are the rises in food bank use, rent arrears and in-work poverty really worth a 3% uplift in employment, when many of those jobs are precarious, low-paid and unsustainable? The DWP must look again at cuts to work allowances to really make work pay, cut in-work poverty and allow people to get on. The roll-out is supposed to allow the DWP to adapt where things are going wrong, and to fix the problems. Why, then, are the Government not listening to their own Members, to the expert charities, to the Scottish and Welsh Governments and to constituents?
On the subject of listening to constituents, the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross) is failing his constituents by failing to be here to take part in a potential vote on this issue, which will impact on thousands of his constituents and a huge proportion of children in his constituency. Normally, Whips give slips for votes or business days so that MPs can take part in important constituency events or travel with Committees. The Government Whips appear to have slipped the hon. Member for Moray so that he can run the line at a football match in Barcelona. Far from standing up for his constituents, who would get sanctioned for not turning up to a work-related meeting—
Lucy Frazer
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is it appropriate, in a debate about universal credit, to talk about the absence or otherwise of a particular Member of Parliament?