Universal Credit

Rosie Duffield Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Lab)]

We are here today because this Government are intentionally concealing what they know to be the truth about universal credit. The concealment of impact studies and papers relating to the roll-out of universal credit is an injustice not just to the current recipients of UC, but to each and every future recipient in this country, of which there are thousands.

Those hundreds of thousands of people up and down the UK right now are nervously awaiting their turn for what must feel like a benefits executioner’s block. People are being told time and again that it will not hurt and that the impact of the change will be swift and clean, but we all know that to be untrue. Benefits are being cut and cuts hurt. Universal credit in its current form is a cruel blade and such cuts have a terminal effect. I mean that quite literally, because the bungled roll-out of universal credit is causing severe hardship for many people, at a time when this Government say—to quote the Prime Minster—that “austerity is over”. We have learned three facts this afternoon: first, austerity is not over; secondly, the universal credit roll-out is failing; and thirdly, this Government are concealing the truth about universal credit’s failings.

When the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said at the recent Conservative party conference that reports of cuts to budgets were fake news, it is possible that she was a little confused. Perhaps she has not read the reports suggesting that cuts to universal credit will total £3.6 billion a year by 2020. Perhaps the reports that she has seen, but has so far refused to put before the House, say otherwise. We will not know until she does lay the reports before Parliament, as well as any analysis produced by her Department since 8 January 2018 on the effect of universal credit. That is what we are asking her to do today.

Universal credit was designed to lift people out of poverty. It started with laudable ambition in 2011, with the Government saying that 350,000 children would be taken out of poverty because universal credit would have higher take-up and wider entitlement than legacy benefits, so might they be willing to tell us today how many hundreds of thousands of children are currently better off for their families being on universal credit? They will not, because almost none are—far from it, in fact. As we have heard this afternoon, organisations such as the Child Poverty Action Group know that 4.5 million children in Britain are living in poverty in 2018.

Might the Government be willing to tell us how far they are from achieving their 2011 aim of lifting 600,000 working-age adults out of poverty through the roll-out of universal credit? They will not tell us because, instead of 600,000 people being better off, we have a system that has allowed rent arrears to climb, food bank referrals to spiral and thousands of adults to be plunged into despair, turning to friends, family and charity for help when they cannot pay the bills to keep them warm.