Universal Credit Work Allowance

Marie Rimmer Excerpts

Wednesday 6th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

I wish you and everyone in the House a very happy new year, Madam Deputy Speaker. Unfortunately, it will not be a very happy new year for many people out there on universal credit.

I am very proud of where I come from in the north-west—the St Helens and Knowsley constituencies. We were at the very centre of the powerhouse during the industrial revolution, but sadly we have lived through deindustrialisation. We have struggled to provide new jobs for our constituents, who received good pay in manufacturing. Unfortunately, most jobs are now in services. Many are insecure, involving zero-hours contracts and agency and part-time work, and those that are secure provide very low pay.

The people in my constituency want to work. They are hard workers. They want to be respected, and they want the dignity of providing a home for their families, clothing them and putting food on the table; but they struggle. Many of them go to food banks, and that is not right; it is unfair.

If the Department for Work and Pensions were part of local government, someone’s feet would not touch the ground. For the Department not to carry out an assessment of the impact of taking billions of pounds in benefit away from the poorest people is totally unacceptable. No one would get away with it in local government, but this is central Government, and there has been no impact assessment. Did the Secretary of State not want one? He repeatedly insisted that people would not be worse off under universal credit because of the “into work” benefit changes that were announced in the summer Budget, but now the Government have admitted that that is not the case.

At the beginning, universal credit was sold on the basis that it would encourage people into work. Some went along with that, thinking that perhaps it was right, but they were warned by all the IT experts that it simply was not practical to expect the roll-out to take place in the existing timeframe, and it has repeatedly been delayed. Unfortunately, however, my constituency has had its roll-out. We are on universal credit at the moment—not all of us, but the latest assessment is that there are 1,586 families on universal credit. [Interruption.] That was the estimate in November 2015 and it came from the House of Commons Library. I am sorry but I would rather take the Library’s word than the Government’s. If you have a problem, go and sort it. Of those 1,586 claimants in November 2015, 510 were in work; 510 will be affected. The facts are from the House of Commons Library. They have not been proven wrong to me as yet. Lone parents—adults who are not disabled—will lose £2,400 in net income in April next year. A single person or a couple, where one or more are disabled, will lose £2,000 in April this year. A single mother of two working full time on the minimum wage will lose £2,400.

Too many of the jobs in my constituency are low-paid and insecure. We have many agency workers and the Government have done nothing about agency working. Agency workers turn up for work, they are sent home from work. They could have a week’s work now, a week’s work in a fortnight or work for three months. One agency even offered two week’s work for free for the employer, after which they would guarantee that person an interview for a permanent job—for 12 months. Not many of them got a permanent job. We had people who were told they if they worked at Tata and Jaguar through the agency for 12 months they would get full-time jobs. But it did not happen; they finished just a few weeks before. Seven weeks later, some of them were called back for three weeks. That is what is going on in the real world out there where I live.

The reason benefits have gone up is that the Government of the day’s economic strategy has failed miserably. Do not talk to me about debt in this country, because that has a lot to do with it. We paid off more debt than any Government on record. What is more, we got up to 1% of GDP and we paid £38 billion of the debt. We had to borrow money to save the banks and working-class people’s savings. So do not talk to me about that. We are only up to 0.4% of GDP now. Benefits have soared because you have not produced the jobs that you said would be produced—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I allowed the hon. Lady to get away with it once when she said “you”. If she wishes to attack the Minister, she has to say the Minister or the Government.

[Marie Rimmer]

I do apologise—the Minister, or the Secretary of State, who is not present and often takes his leave when we are on such subjects.

It is totally unacceptable—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. The hon. Lady has had her five minutes.