Universal Credit Roll-out

Neil Coyle Excerpts

Thursday 16th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Michael Tomlinson]

I will come back to the Labour party’s record on rolling out benefits in due course, but the hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I wish that Labour Members would speak up more loudly with their support for the principle behind universal credit, because at the moment it sounds like they are calling for not a delay or a pause, but a scrap. The Labour party has opposed every single benefit change that this Government have brought into effect, and the cost of its position would have been tens of billions of pounds. However, this is not about the money. More importantly, it is about the people, and universal credit is about encouraging people into work.

[Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)]

I am really pleased to hear that the hon. Gentleman is supporting universal credit, although he failed to vote in favour of it the other week. Would he also support a renewed project to study how universal credit supports people to get into work? The Department for Work and Pensions has delayed and denied an opportunity to review the original study to prove whether universal credit is still working, because lots of people expect that it is not.

[Michael Tomlinson]

Perhaps the Minister will respond to the hon. Gentleman’s point in due course.

I chair the all-party group on youth employment, so I want to use any mechanism available to encourage young people—everyone, in fact—to get into work. [Interruption.] Perhaps the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) could listen to my response, rather than just shaking his head and taking part in exchanges across the Chamber.

[Neil Coyle]

The Minister is chuntering, so I cannot hear the hon. Gentleman.

[Michael Tomlinson]

Forgive me; I will speak up. If the hon. Gentleman stops talking, however, he might be able to hear a little more easily. He is more than welcome to come along to the meetings of the all-party group. We met yesterday, which was the date on which the latest Office for National Statistics employment figures came out. We track those figures each month. It was pleasing to see that there are still record numbers for youth employment and record lows of young people who are out of work. The youth unemployment rate of 11.9% is in touching distance of the lowest ever figure on comparable records, and it is almost half the youth unemployment rate of over 22% in 2011, which followed the disastrous Labour Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)]

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) for securing this debate and acknowledge that this is the start of the Work and Pensions Committee’s work on this matter. The six-week delay has become totemic, but it is far from the only problem with universal credit which, let me be clear, has been a disaster. Anyone who looks at its original plan, budget and timetable cannot conclude anything else. The roll-out should have finished this year. Instead, it has reached only 10% of people, but it has done 10,000 times the damage to those who are now affected by it. Universal credit has cost more, and it has delivered less. It was always intended to cut help for 450,000 disabled people through axing the severe disability premium, ending the disability income guarantee and making DLA or PIP less generous for disabled people in work and for disabled children. That was the intention, and it has been made still less generous through the tax allowance changes.

The pretence that the roll-out has gone smoothly needs debunking. Instead of listening and acting on concerns, the Government have doubled down. They told us that things were tickety-boo and hunky-dory just a few weeks ago. They told us that they did not need to pause, tweak or fix it. Then, however, they did not vote on our Opposition day motion on universal credit because they know that universal credit is failing. They have yet to outline how that structural incompatibility will be changed in the longer term.

My home is in Southwark, which has been affected by universal credit and is in the test area. I refer people every week to my food bank, which has seen a third more people this year and has seen a tripling in the number of children needing help solely due to universal credit being extended to parents. Southwark Council has £6 million-worth of arrears from universal credit recipients. Ministers like to pretend that people are carrying arrears and debt over from other systems, which is simply untrue—it is a myth. The average housing benefit tenant in Southwark is £8 in credit, and the average Southwark tenant on universal credit is now £1,800 in arrears, which is unacceptable.

Cutting the timeframe might help, but many other problems need to be fixed including tackling problems with payment amounts. We have heard about real-time information problems today, but payment amounts will affect many more in self-employment and on zero-hours contracts. The Government also need to make clear what payment options, including fortnightly payments, are available, and they need to make alternative payment arrangements the standard for some groups. They need to enhance the trusted partners scheme to allow councils greater management control. They need to maintain housing payments for people moving on to universal credit from housing benefit, and they need to remove the seven-day waiting period before assessment, which is an utter con.

Ministers have had the chance to fix those issues, and they declined the opportunity to do so a few weeks ago, so anyone trying to claim universal credit today will see Boxing day before they get a single penny of support. Father Christmas will arrive before any support and, because of the delays, the Easter bunny is likely to arrive before some people get a penny of help from this Government. For the record, I do not believe in the Easter bunny, but I am still optimistic about Father Christmas appearing today in the form of the Minister offering an early Christmas present by announcing that he will tackle payment delays and resolve all the other problems with universal credit.