Oral Answers to Questions

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Stephen Timms]

I very much hope that we can, because the hon. Gentleman is right: there is a good deal of anxiety about these overpayment problems. We hope that the alert service will at least inform people when they run into a problem so that they do not then develop a large overpayment, which has happened all too often in the past, but we also need to look at the other arrangements relating to carer’s allowance in order to provide the reassurance for which the hon. Gentleman has rightly called.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

17. What assessment she has made of trends in the number of benefit sanctions in the last five years.

[The Minister for Employment (Alison McGovern)]

In May 2019 the universal credit sanction rate was 3.17%. It reduced considerably during the pandemic, gradually returning to 3.51% by November 2021. It then continued to rise, reaching a peak of 7.29% in October 2023, but it is now falling, with a rate of 6.17% in May 2024.

[Dr Huq]

According to recent research by Gingerbread, a high percentage of sanctions have been misapplied to single parents, not because they have not met the job search requirements but because of missed meetings for reasons connected with childcare. Max, a bereaved single dad of two, had his sanction overturned, which involved a fairly challenging process. Will my hon. Friend please look into the possibility of overhauling the mess of a system that was left behind by that lot over there?

[Alison McGovern]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question and, through her, I would like to thank Gingerbread for its work on this issue. There have always been, and always will be, conditions attached to social security, but the past 14 years show what happens when we have a Government who are more interested in blaming people and creating cheap headlines than offering real help. In our manifesto, Labour committed to review universal credit so that it makes work pay and tackles poverty, and the report that Gingerbread has written will also help inform our child poverty taskforce.