Universal Credit: Managed Migration

Neil Coyle Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alok Sharma]

The hon. Lady talks about poverty. May I point out respectfully to her that since 2010, 1 million fewer people are living in absolute poverty, including 300,000 fewer children? [Interruption.] The hon. Lady may not like the answer, but she cannot argue with the facts. As for the regulations, we have been very clear about them, as was the Secretary of State yesterday.

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

Happy new year, Mr Speaker.

Five years after the roll-out of universal credit and two years after it was meant to finish, it is costing three times as much as the legacy benefits, and the Government have had to announce a pilot to test whether it even works. Is this not an admission of colossal failure, with equally colossal human and financial costs?

[Alok Sharma]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is arguing against our conducting a pilot, but that would be irresponsible. We have always made it clear that we need to get this right, which is why we will organise a pilot.

Universal Credit

Neil Coyle Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

Is not the real way to combat poverty to get people off benefits and into work, is not the evidence that people on universal credit are more likely to get back into work than people on the old benefits, and is not that the real test of this system’s success?

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

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Ms McVey]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. That is what Conservative Members agree about: helping people into work. For us, getting—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I say to the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle), whose grinning countenance belies an aggressiveness of spirit in this matter, that it is not really in order to yell out, “On the same point,” as a way of trying to ensure that one is called.

[Neil Coyle]

I am trying to stand out from the crowd.

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[Ms McVey]

Conservative Members have made sure that since 2010, 1,000 people each and every day have got a job. I want to give out a very, very important statistic that came out yesterday—youth unemployment has fallen by 50% since this Government have been in office. That is thousands of young people with a future that this Government have given them.

[Neil Coyle]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Ms McVey]

I will indeed.

[Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Ind)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

[Neil Coyle]

I am really grateful to the Secretary of State—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Before we hear from the hon. Gentleman—I am sure that his intervention will not be aggressive—we have a point of order from Frank Field.

[Mr Speaker]

I did not have any impression that the Secretary of State was having any particular difficulty; I think she was spoilt for choice and taking a little while to exercise her choice. But we are always grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s advice, solicited or otherwise. [Interruption.] Well, I am not going to comment on the glasses situation—it is rather beyond the ken of the Speaker. However, we note the right hon. Gentleman’s well intentioned advice.

[Neil Coyle]

The Secretary of State is making her usual robust case and claims that the system has improved. Why is it, then, that the Department acknowledges that thousands of landlords, especially private sector landlords, will never be part of the landlord portal; that the Government have had to exempt supported housing fully from universal credit; that 300,000 people will get late payments this year, according to the Department; and that underpayments and overpayments are increasing under universal credit to levels not seen with the legacy benefits?

[Ms McVey]

To be fair, 76% of people coming on to universal credit had arrears in their housing benefit, according to the report by the National Federation of ALMOs. That is the reality of it. I have given the figures for the extra debt people got into under the previous Labour Government.

Some very interesting speeches were given in the House in 2016, when people understood that we had to get the benefits bill down. This is what was said on the Floor of the House:

“The deficit has to be eliminated. We believe in controlling the cost of social security so that it is fair”

on

“the people who are paying for it”—[Official Report, 20 July 2015; Vol. 598, c. 1265]—

and for those who need it. That did not come from a Conservative Member but from Labour’s acting shadow Secretary of State for the Department for Work and Pensions. We all believe in making a fair benefits system and getting people into work, and that is what universal credit is doing.

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[Gordon Henderson]

As my hon. Friend will understand, the claim is being made that some people who use those food banks were forced to do so because of the difficulties faced when claiming UC. When I pressed them about those difficulties, they said that one was the requirement for claims to be made online, which was also raised by the shadow Secretary of State. Some people claimed that they either were not computer literate or did not have access to a computer.

[Neil Coyle]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Gordon Henderson]

I will not give way again because I do not have time. I pointed out that such people could visit the local jobcentre, where they would be able to use one of the bank of computers installed there. In addition, they would be helped to navigate the system by a member of staff or a volunteer from one of the voluntary organisations that are now based in the jobcentre.

Of course, there were people who faced other difficulties, so I asked the food bank to provide me with details of those people so that I could get somebody to contact them to investigate and take up their cases with the DWP. When we received that information, we discovered that many of the people were living in a local hostel that provides temporary accommodation for homeless adults. A member of my staff contacted the people concerned and it soon became obvious that some of them suffered from underlying problems that affected their ability to manage the transition to UC, and that forced them into using the food bank. Those problems included drug addiction, alcoholism, mental health problems, an inability to manage money, or plain fecklessness. Automatically blaming their problems on UC, which is what the Opposition appear to be doing, is doing those people no favours. If somehow the delivery of UC could be made perfect overnight, that would not make people any less dependent on drugs or alcohol. It would not solve their mental health problems. It would not help them to manage their money better and it would not make them less feckless. Of course, we have to do something to help those people, but the truth is that they would still have the same problems, whatever benefits system was put in place.

Luckily, such people are in the minority. However, there are some people who have genuine concerns, which leads me nicely on to the faults in the system that I mentioned at the beginning of my speech. My No. 1 concern is the five weeks’ delay in the receipt of the first benefit payment made under UC. I urge the Department to look at whether there is a way in which that can be phased in over a longer period. Of course, people can get an advance payment, but some people are simply unable to manage that money well enough for it to last five weeks, so again, I ask for that to be looked at. I know of claimants, by the way, who spend the money in the first week and then have to resort to food banks for the remaining weeks.

The second problem is the repayment requirement for an advance payment. That is something else I would like the Department to look at to see whether it could be done over a two-year, rather than a one-year, period. The third problem is that under the legacy system, claimants were provided with a letter confirming what benefits they were receiving. Under UC, that is not provided and I would like that to be changed if possible. The final thing, which I have taken up with the NHS, is that there is no box for UC on the back of prescriptions, and I would like that to change as well.

Universal Credit

Neil Coyle Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alok Sharma]

People will get one-to-one support under universal credit. They have an opportunity to have a discussion with their work coach and develop that relationship, meaning that they can be signposted to the support that they need. It is working.

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

Universal credit was introduced with three principles: it was supposed to simplify the system, but more than 300,000 people will be paid late this year through no fault of their own; it was supposed to save money, but it costs three times as much to administer; and it was supposed to get people into work, but the NAO states clearly that the Government

“will never be able to measure”

whether they have achieved that goal. What went wrong and who has taken responsibility for this failure?

[Alok Sharma]

It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman talks about employment on the day that we have reached a record low level of unemployment since 1975. The policies of this Government are clearly working: 80% of first payments are made fully and on time; in some cases, that figure gets up to 90%. It is important that we get the right information from people to be able to verify their costs. If we are able to do that, payments are made.

The Secretary of State’s Handling of Universal Credit

Neil Coyle Excerpts

Wednesday 11th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms McVey]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comment.

This is what it is about, and I keep saying that. It is not about scaremongering. It is not about saying things even the UK Statistics Authority says is scaremongering. It is not about making people’s journey to claim benefit even more difficult. We want to make the journey to claim benefit easier for people. While the Opposition would not apologise for voting to stop that £1.5 billion-worth of support, we now have changes coming through to support people through the severe disability premium. I want to ask the Opposition: will they be voting with the Government to make sure we support those people, or will they take a stance by voting against? We have no answer again.

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

You took the disability premium away!

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. Mr Coyle, calm down. Moderation and good temper governs our debate. You are not showing much sign of that.

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

The Secretary of State started the debate by asking for an apology about words used towards her by a senior member of my party. I add my apologies to those she has already received from my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field). I am very conscious of the plaque that is right over my shoulder. The language of violence and threats to people has no part in our party or our politics, but the context of today’s debate is the Secretary of State’s inaccurate statements, which she has admitted were misleading.

This Government have misled the whole country about universal credit. They have claimed that it is on time. Its delivery to millions of people was meant to be finished in October 2017. We are about 12% of the way through. They claim it has public support, when one nickname locally in Southwark is “Universal Dread-it”. They claim that it supports people in work, when the Secretary of State is meeting a constituent of mine who was self-employed and made homeless as a result of universal credit. They claim that it is on budget, when it costs three times as much to administer a decision on universal credit as the legacy benefits, and it has cost £1.9 billion to get 800,000 people on to universal credit. The general public get that, even if Ministers still want to try to peddle misinformation, and people certainly get it in Southwark, which is a full service area and an early adopter.

In Southwark, the claim that it is a better system has been completely blown apart. The council is owed £5 million in arrears from universal credit recipients alone, and the average arrears are now £1,800-plus. The Government claim that those people were in arrears before, but that is simply not true. With a legacy benefit such as housing benefit, the average council tenant is £8 in credit—they have no arrears at all. For those who are on legacy housing benefit and in arrears, the average figure is less than half the average for those on universal credit.

The Government claim that universal credit is working well. Tell Citizens Advice: 50,000 people a quarter are going to Citizens Advice up and down the country for information and support on universal credit. Tell the food banks: Southwark food bank alone gave out 4,227 three-day emergency parcels last year, including to more than 1,600 children, the single biggest reason being universal credit. The Government also claim that most people get the right support quickly, so everything is hunky-dory. The NAO said that this year alone, more than a quarter of a million people will get payments late. That is completely unacceptable. The Department is ignoring those real problems and making increasingly desperate excuses and outlandish claims about universal credit.

We are here today because the Secretary of State made a false or misleading statement about what the NAO said. Actually, she has claimed multiple times, including this week, that universal credit gets more people into work. The NAO said:

“The Department will never be able to measure whether Universal Credit actually leads to…more people in work, because it cannot isolate the effect”.

It also said:

“Both we, and the Department, doubt it will ever be possible for the Department to measure whether the economic goal of increasing employment has been achieved.”

That is what the NAO said, so enough of the Trumptopia—enough of blaming, scapegoating and distraction through disinformation administered by a Department that is failing from bottom to top.

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[Alok Sharma]

Let us talk about the help that the work coaches are giving. The NAO report says:

“A survey of live service claimants found that claimant satisfaction levels were similar to those on legacy benefits and in our visits to jobcentres we observed good relationships between work coaches and claimants.”

The support is available, and it is working and helping people to get into work.

[Neil Coyle]

rose—

[David Linden]

Will the Minister give way?

Oral Answers to Questions

Neil Coyle Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms McVey]

As the hon. Lady will know, we have provided £200 million-worth of support for local authorities to help people who will need the help not just for budgeting but for going online through IT; we have a free phone line and we meet with people face to face to do just that.

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

4. What assessment she has made of the efficacy of universal credit in supporting people into work.

[The Minister for Employment (Alok Sharma)]

The Department published an analysis on 8 June which showed a near doubling of the proportion of UC claimants in a paid job after eight months into the claim. The Department published analysis last year which shows that UC claimants are 4 percentage points more likely to be in work than an equivalent claimant on JSA six months after their claim.

[Neil Coyle]

The National Audit Office reported that the Department will never be able to measure whether universal credit actually leads to more people in work because it cannot isolate the effect of UC against other economic factors. So if the Department serious in what it told the NAO about intending to evaluate specifically the impact of UC, is that evaluation under way, how many people are being evaluated and when will it report?

[Alok Sharma]

As the Secretary of State has said, we are at record levels of employment in this country and that is because of the policies of this Government. The hon. Gentleman talks about the 200,000 extra people who will be in work as a result of UC. He will also know that, in 2012, the Institute for Fiscal Studies looked at the methodology, which related to the key element of this, which was the financial incentives that will make more people go into work, and it concluded that this was within the plausible range.

Universal Credit and Welfare Changes

Neil Coyle Excerpts

Thursday 21st June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms McVey]

I thank my hon. Friend. I went with him to his local Trussell Trust to see what other changes we should be looking at, and one of them involved the payment system for people in work. Remember, this is the first time we have ever had a benefit system supporting people in work. Beforehand, it was always for people who were out of work. I pledged to look at that, and the team is doing so. As I said, we are supporting people.

What my hon. Friend says about the Opposition is quite right. The NAO did not say that we should stop universal credit; it said that we should carry on and, if anything, proceed more quickly. But remember, this is the Opposition who said that our changes in 2010 would result in 1 million more people being unemployed. How wrong they were, and how wrong they are again!

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

The NAO says that universal credit is expensive, massively delayed and over-complex, and that the Department will never be able to provide evidence that it helps more people into work. The Secretary of State says that everything is tickety-boo, and that this is a personal, tailor-made system based on the individual. Perhaps I could encourage her to meet my constituent, Augustin, who did not meet the minimum income floor and expected earnings under universal credit and has been made homeless as a result. She could meet him at my local food bank, which has seen a tripling in the number of children it supports as a direct result of universal credit roll-out. Will she meet him?

[Ms McVey]

A couple of things, starting with the minimum income floor: this was brought in for when people had set up a business and were getting paid below the minimum wage in order to support them and to help them to improve their business case, but so that if that was still not working, we could then say, “How do we help you to become employed, because self-employment is obviously not working for you?” That was why the minimum income floor was brought in. If anybody has been made homeless through this, I will meet them. We have advance payments and support, and our work coaches work with homelessness charities to achieve the exact opposite of that. In fact, I can tell the hon. Gentleman about countless cases where they have stopped people being homeless, but if that has not been the case for his constituent, we need to listen and get that changed rapidly.

Personal Independence Payments

Neil Coyle Excerpts

Monday 4th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms McVey]

I am sorry if the hon. Gentleman thinks that anybody was bragging. It is known as just putting the facts on the record after people have sometimes sought to provide misinformation or incorrect facts, merely by stating that more people are getting the higher benefits and more people are getting PIP than were getting DLA. That really needs to be heard so that we dispel any myths from the Opposition.

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

The Secretary of State suggests that PIP is more generous than DLA. Can she confirm that the Department’s analysis shows that, once it is fully rolled out, PIP will support 500,000 fewer disabled people than DLA? Can she conform that, six months after the Government admitted that a previous mistake on assessments affected 220,000 disabled people, not one of those disabled people is receiving the full benefit to which they are lawfully entitled?

[Ms McVey]

What we can say is that the reality is that more people are getting PIP than are getting DLA.

Personal Independence Payment

Neil Coyle Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms McVey]

I thank my hon. Friend, because the point really is about the practicalities of getting this right. It is about engaging with stakeholders and charities. It is about working with our Department to get this right. Mind has welcomed the decision, as have other charities, and it is working with us. Once we have worked through that, obviously we will disseminate it through the whole system.

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

The Secretary of State says that the Department will now be identifying the 164,000 disabled people who were wrongly denied the help to which they are entitled. Her Department also recently announced it is scrapping a target it previously denied existed—that of upholding 80% of initial decisions. When will the DWP be contacting the 83,000 disabled people who were potentially wrongly denied help under that equally dodgy practice?

[Ms McVey]

We will do everything systematically and coherently. We will get to people affected by any incorrect decision as soon as possible.

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.

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[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.

Universal Credit Roll-out

Neil Coyle Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Julian Knight]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I am about to discuss tax credits and my experience of dealing with that area as a personal finance journalist in 2003, when the credits were launched.

Work is the only long-term route to financial independence. Not only does long-term unemployment sap an individual’s self-confidence and erode their employability, but children who grow up in workless households are far more likely never to enter employment themselves. Generations of people do not get into work, and therefore poverty beds down. By acclimatising claimants to the rhythms of working life and being designed to ensure that employment always pays, universal credit not only supports today’s claimants, but is helping to steer many of the next generation away from the welfare system altogether, which is a very good thing indeed.

This is, undoubtedly, an enormous change, and Ministers have been wise to choose to proceed cautiously. The full roll-out of universal credit will not be completed until 2020, a whole nine years after the policy was first trialled and enacted. That involves many dry runs, and the process is in very stark contrast to the introduction of tax credits in 2003, when I remember very well that there was huge disruption to millions of people’s lives.

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

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that 2017-18 was supposed to be the final year for the roll-out of universal credit under the initial plan, but that the Government had already accepted that they needed to improve the process? Does he wonder why the Government are being so stubborn now?

[Julian Knight]

I applaud the Government for taking the roll-out to 2022—it shows they are listening. They want to get this right so that we do not end up with the situation we saw in 2003 with tax credits when, frankly, there was a dead ear from the then Government.

I will conclude as I am aware that many Members wish to speak. It is only right that we acknowledge the measures that the Government have put into place to protect vulnerable users, to provide an advanced payment system for claimants who cannot afford to wait for six weeks for new payments, and to ensure that people who are transferred on to universal credit see no loss in their entitlement in cash terms. The Government have rightly announced a review of DWP phone lines, which is a welcome and positive development. I hope that all Government Departments are cognisant of such situations and people in need are not charged excessively for using phone lines.