Universal Credit: Delayed Roll-Out

Neil Gray Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to make a statement regarding the delay to the full roll-out of universal credit.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Will Quince)]

The Secretary of State and I informed Parliament yesterday that we had revisited our forecast for universal credit and were extending its completion date to 2024. Our planning for universal credit relies on assumptions about the number of people whose circumstances will change each day, thereby naturally migrating. Our forecasts to date have relied on 50,000 households experiencing a change in circumstances each month. Based on this, we had predicted that the process of natural migration to universal credit would be completed by December 2023.

Information collected on changes to people’s circumstances suggests that natural migration is happening less frequently than we expected. This suggests broad stability in people’s lives and can be attributed to a number of reasons, including the robustness of the labour market. We now estimate that 900,000 fewer households will naturally migrate between now and December 2023 than we had forecast. Given that we expect to manage about 100,000 households to universal credit each month, it necessarily follows that if we are to protect the interests of claimants and move them to universal credit safely it will take a further nine months to complete the implementation of universal credit.

I can assure colleagues that claimants will not lose money from their universal credit award owing to this forecasting change. We will always put the best interests of our claimants first, and as we move into the managed migration phase protecting the vulnerable will be our utmost concern.

[Neil Gray]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question, which I believe is the first to be granted to the SNP under your speakership.

The UK Government still have no respect for the House. They let the BBC announce this delay as part of a news trail for the documentary being aired tonight, without a written ministerial statement—I have not seen one, so can the Minister tell the House where it is?

I feel for the Minister, being forced to stand here today, because I know it was not his decision to withhold that information from colleagues. Where is the Secretary of State? This should have been an oral ministerial statement.

Quotes from the documentary seem to suggest that this decision was taken by a senior official, not the Secretary of State. Has she abandoned decision-making oversight? When did she sanction this decision? Perhaps there was no oral ministerial statement because she found out only last night, like the rest of us—what an absolute shambles.

Universal credit was supposed to have been fully rolled out by 2017. This further delay means that it will have been delayed by a further seven years at a potential cost of £500 million. It highlights how far universal credit is from getting it right, as does the fact that this delay is needed to avoid further hardship to those in receipt of the benefit.

Ministers say, as the Minister said again just now, that the delay is needed because people are scared to go on universal credit. They say it like they are actually surprised. The great irony is that if this Tory Government were to listen and do what expert charities and those actually in receipt of universal credit were saying, these delays would not be needed.

Will the UK Government use this delay productively by making a meaningful investment in universal credit to see it fixed, scrapping the two-child cap and rape clause, ending the debt and poverty-inducing five-week wait and making work pay by fully restoring work allowances?

Finally, will the Minister confirm that this delay means that more people will be part of the natural rather than the managed migration process, which in turn will mean that those recipients will lose out on transitional payments, thus saving the Government more money at the expense of people who actually need it?

[Will Quince]

I have not yet seen the BBC documentary, and I suspect that the hon. Gentleman has not done so either, because it is due to be aired shortly. However, it is important to stress that officials discussed advice to be sent to Ministers late in 2019, and the final discussions were held with Ministers in 2020. Parliament was then informed. This relates to the back end of the timetable, which concerns people moving to universal credit in 2024-25, so the change was communicated in good time.

The hon. Gentleman referred to cost, and it is important to put that in context. This is additional money that will go into the pockets of our claimants, some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in our country. About 900,000 people could now receive transitional protection who would not have been able to receive it through natural migration.