Coronavirus Outbreak: DWP Response

Martin Docherty-Hughes Excerpts

Thursday 26th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

It is good to follow the hon. Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger), although of course in the 1600s this Parliament did not exist, so those laws would not have applied in Scotland, thankfully.

I thank the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), and all its members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens), for the report. However, I might be the fly in the ointment when it comes to some of the issues it raised.

From my perspective, and I hope that of the majority of Members on my Benches, the report provides a true exposition of the Government’s position on social security, and their ideological thinking about its role in society. At least on these Benches, we believe that a social security policy worth its name should be based on its role in defining society through support enabling equal access to security for all based on need, especially during a global pandemic. I am afraid that, at least from my perspective, the Government’s position and outlook seem to uphold a post-Thatcherite fundamentalism. It is as though they have offered a prayer to a dystopian Saint Francis of Assisi, “Where there is discord, may we bring more. Where there is error, may we entrench it. Where there is doubt, may we add to it, and where there is despair, may we embolden it.” I am afraid that I do not see UC as a national asset. I certainly see the members of staff who are having to deal with its consequences as an asset, because I and my team, and many other Members, know how much hard work they have done.

It is as though the Conservative party believes that the path to paradise begins in hell, but, just maybe, the long road to salvation actually lies in the Committee’s recommendations. For example, it says:

“The Department should continue to allow claimants to use their Government Gateway accounts to verify their identity once the lockdown has ended. It should also use this as an opportunity to reflect on what other changes to the process are needed, with a particular focus on the needs of people who are vulnerable and digitally excluded.”

I would actually go so far as to say that the opportunities of digitisation should not cloud the Government’s view of the lived experience of many citizens. Even the most advanced digital states recognise the fundamental truth of digitisation: it is to ensure that traditional means of access to services remain open to all, and it is not some mandatory utilitarian concept of happiness and human worth.

The Committee also states:

“We recommend that the Government urgently take steps to return to their pre-existing benefits, or the equivalent financial position, anyone who has inadvertently left themselves worse off by making a claim for Universal Credit during the coronavirus outbreak.”

It is as though those on the Government Back Benches see social security as they see foreign aid—as a reserve worth fleecing. Just as they fail to see the worth of foreign aid, they fail to see the worth of a needs-based social security system. I am reminded by Rachel Maddow that social security is not a Ponzi scheme, is not bankrupting and is not an outrage and that—these are my words—if it is funded and worked properly, it works. The Government should restore entitlement, as the Committee’s report highlights, not just because of covid-19, but because it is the morally just and economically sound thing to do.

The Committee’s litany of exasperation continues:

“In these exceptional circumstances, the Government should immediately suspend NRPF conditions on public health grounds for the duration of the outbreak”—

that is, on public health grounds during a global pandemic. As the Committee also notes, the Government might not even know how many citizens have no recourse to public funds—so much for a digital nation approach.

The Committee gets into its stride on the issue of the benefit cap, as the Chair of the Committee highlighted. It states:

“The Chancellor’s decision to increase Universal Credit payments by £20…is very welcome. But some households will not be able to benefit from these increases. This is because, as a result of the uplifts, they will be hit by the benefit cap.”

The Tory party giveth, and the Tory party taketh away, and all the while 4,100 of my constituents who are claimants have lost an average of £57, which was deducted during a global pandemic. That is the difference between queuing at Asda and queueing at a food bank.

I could go on to a litany of despair from Glasgow East; Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath; North Ayrshire and Arran; Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock; and Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill, in each of which nearly 4,000 constituents have lost, on average, about £52 to £55 over this period. That is less a prayer of supplication—a mea culpa, mea culpa—than a Tory mantra of faithless cold-heartedness that repudiates the worth of our common humanity. In summing up, I, my party and, I believe, Scotland repudiate that false dogma and its baseless Thatcherite foundations.