The Secretary of State’s Handling of Universal Credit

Rachel Maclean Excerpts

Wednesday 11th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Let me start by welcoming my near neighbour and old friend the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), back to his place on the Front Bench.

Today there was a fantastic opportunity for the Opposition to hold a debate on one of a range of very topical issues, many of which arise this week: the future of NATO, the way forward for the western Balkans, our security partnership with the United States, or the revised economic growth figures and the potential impact on savers and borrowers.

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

Or the World cup.

[Richard Graham]

Or, indeed, the World cup. Unfortunately, however, the Opposition chose none of those issues, and have fallen rather than risen to the occasion by tabling a motion containing two censures and a personal attack, in the name of the Leader of the Opposition, in relation to something for which the Secretary of State has already apologised.

I am here today for a straightforward reason: to remind the hon. Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood)—who is not paying a huge amount of attention—that it is a mistake for the Opposition to throw stones from very fragile glass houses. Let me explain why. On 11 October last year, the Leader of the Opposition said, at Parliament’s peak moment, during Prime Minister’s Question Time:

“The last Labour Government lifted a million children out of poverty. Gloucester City Homes has evicted one in eight of all of its tenants because of universal credit. The Prime Minister talks about helping the poorest, but the reality is a very, very different story.”—[Official Report, 11 October 2017; Vol. 629, c. 324.]

Let me remind the House that the reality was indeed a very, very different story. The actual figure was not one in eight—which would have meant 650 out of 5,200 tenants in my constituency—but a total of eight, one of whom had left the property 18 months earlier and another of whom had left the country. That is a very, very different story indeed. It would have been fitting for the Leader of the Opposition to apologise, and to have expressed some form of recognition that he had slandered the city of Gloucester, Gloucester City Homes—which is an excellent housing association—and, indeed, all of us who try to engage in a rational, measured, objective debate on universal credit, which is what we did in the Select Committee when I was on it. My point is that we should avoid these motions of censure, stop criticising people personally, and focus on the facts.

Before I run out of time, let me offer some recommendations to the Secretary of State. First, the trusted partner programme is working very well, and housing associations such as Gloucester City Homes benefit from it. Please may we have more of it for more housing associations? Secondly, the Secretary of State is right to focus on debt, and I should love to know more about why people go on to universal credit with so many debts.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq).

When I first saw the motion on the Order Paper I was dismayed by the wording and the personal attack on the Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Ms McVey). It was very good of the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) and the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) to stand and give their apologies, and I give a heartfelt welcome to that. I hope they will call on their colleagues, particularly the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), to stand in this Chamber and repeat their words, because the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark is absolutely right to say we have more in common when we work together, and we should put that hatred aside once and for all; the hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Member for Birkenhead are great examples of that.

I want to focus on an aspect of UC that we sometimes do not focus on enough. I come at this from my background in software and systems and technology. The Secretary of State has explained that UC is an agile test and learn system, but what does that really mean? In the words of the jobcentre staff in Redditch, it means that every claimant is an individual and they have support tailored to their unique circumstances. Those circumstances are not static at one point in time; they might change—their income might go up or down, their family situation might change. That is why what we are discussing is so important. The calls to pause UC often unfortunately fail to grasp the nature of an agile test and learn system; if we pause a system, we cannot have that feedback put into the system to improve it. We want the system to be improved in order to be able to improve people’s lives. As my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) has said, this is not just about economics; this is about human potential—people’s human potential to give to their society and to provide for their families, which is what we all want to see.

I have experience of the full service in Redditch; it has been rolled out there. There are always things to improve, and I will focus on one area in the NAO report: will the Department ensure it sets out the goals more clearly and tracks the progress towards them? That is very important in any complex system, which this is.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton is a learning and listening Secretary of State. I commend her on the work she has done, and I am sure she will continue to work in this way.