Universal Credit Roll-out

Debate between Ruth Cadbury and Stephen Timms

Tuesday 24th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

Last week, the Government party refused to vote on the Opposition day motion seeking a pause on the roll-out of universal credit. The motion was tabled because UC is not working in the way its designers told us it would and the way many of us intended and wanted it to. The full roll-out of UC started in my constituency in April 2016, and it is not working for hundreds of my constituents. I know that because they have told me directly and because I have also been told by those trying to help them to deal with the consequences and the mess: the citizens advice bureau, the council’s revenues and benefits staff, food banks, places of worship, community organisations, teachers and school welfare officers.

Those whose income and business depends on regular and reliable payments are also feeling the impact—not only council and housing association landlords, but private landlords, many of whom are small businesses, and childcare providers, which are also small businesses. Employers are telling me of the stress the delays and non-payments are having on their staff who are UC claimants; this is affecting their ability to remain in work, because they cannot afford their childcare place or the cost of travel to work. At worst, claimants are losing their homes, and the only temporary accommodation available at a price the DWP will pay is well outside London—it is too far to commute for those in work hoping to keep their jobs.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Does she agree that alongside the delays, which are such a huge problem, this system is riddled with errors—its administration is not working as it should?

[Ruth Cadbury]

If I have time, I will make one specific point on that.

Other impacts have emerged as the Government cut the funding for DWP staff, which adds to waiting time and errors; many Members will have seen the article in The Independent from a DWP worker who deals with benefits. Then we saw the cuts to in-work support and the cuts to support for third and subsequent children. Those of us who live in high-rent areas, such as west London, where a small family flat costs about three quarters of an average worker’s take home pay, have seen no proper adjustment of the local housing allowance.

In the face of all this evidence, so clearly set out last week by so many MPs on both sides of this House, the Government party refused to vote, and three parliamentary days later the Government have still made no statement to the House in response to the many important and excellent points made in the debate calling for a pause. The Leader of the House committed the Government to respond to the debate and the vote. There is no reason why the Secretary of State or a Minister could not have come to this House before now, at least with an initial response, and today the Minister did not use the opportunity he had to respond to the vote last week. The Government’s actions—or, rather, lack of them—hold in contempt not only Parliament, but those already unable to feed themselves or their children, those who are facing eviction, those who have lost their jobs and, overall, those who have lost their dignity and hope for the future.

Let me give an example from my casework to show why the Government need to freeze or put a pause on the roll-out of UC. I have encountered two people, at different times, whose UC was stopped when employers paid them at the end of the outgoing month, because of the way the weekend or the bank holiday fell, and the DWP stopped their claim because it told them they had been paid double that month and so were not entitled to any UC. This went on for weeks and weeks, with them having no money to pay the rent and the childcare places being lost, and they were put at risk of losing their jobs. If a UC claim is terminated by the DWP, even because of a mistake by the DWP, it cannot be reopened, and the claimant is required to make a fresh claim and to use a new email address—all the journal is lost.

My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) has given the House several suggestions for changes and improvements that could be made to the UC system, including reducing the six-week wait, reinstating the limited capability for work element for disabled people, assessing self-employed people on their annual income, reinstating the level of work allowances and reducing the taper rates. Those are just some of the improvements that could be made and that the Minister could be considering. He could have made some initial comment on them just now, but he did not do so. The system needs to be properly resourced and to have adequate staffing and adequate IT. Local authorities and other landlords need to have access to claim data. By saying that they want the system to work, the Government are, in effect, admitting there is a problem. They need to do more than just want the system to work; we need to know when they will make it work.

Mr Speaker, after last week’s debate, you said:

“This place, and what we do here, matters very much.”—[Official Report, 18 October 2017; Vol. 629, c. 957.]

I agree with you, and so do my constituents.