Universal Credit Roll-out

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

As universal credit is a single credit combining several benefits, the accuracy and timeliness of payments is even more crucial than for the legacy benefits. Benefit errors have been common for some time, as my constituent Veronica and many others know too well, and they can have disastrous consequences.

Even before universal credit, people needed help from a food bank mainly because of problems with the benefits system. Where families claimed multiple benefits, however, even when one was suspended, others usually kept being paid and the family often still had some income. There is no backstop to universal credit, however, meaning that a failure to receive a payment can leave a family and their landlord with absolutely nothing. Local welfare support schemes are extremely patchy, difficult to access and, in some areas, simply do not exist. Delivery continues to be less accurate than for legacy benefits, and the complexity of the benefit makes improvements difficult. I am concerned that the design of universal credit does not sufficiently take into account the lives, skills and resources of the least well off and as a result will lead to greater debt, poverty and exclusion. It should be paused until these design and implementation flaws have been rectified.