Universal Credit Project Assessment Reviews

Ruth George Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Debbie Abrahams]

I am just going to carry on for a moment, if that is all right.

This is the second time in two years that I have brought to the House’s attention Information Commissioner rulings concerning the DWP that the Government have tried to thwart. The first time was when the Government refused to publish data on the number of people who had died after being found fit for work. Those data were shocking and vindicated those who had pushed for their release for several years. They gave cold comfort for the families and friends of those who had died and to those who were still going through the assessment process.

I appreciate that neither universal credit nor the project assessment review reports were initiated under the tenure of the current Secretary of State, but I do urge him to rethink and publish the reports forthwith. Taxpayers’ money must not be used to hide the Government’s embarrassment.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

When the only impact assessment of universal credit we have seen was published five years ago this month, it committed to a post-implementation review within five years and said:

“A comprehensive evaluation programme is being developed for Universal Credit”

to inform and evaluate long-term policy. Are we not now trying to get some crumbs of the evidence the Government committed to providing five years ago and should have provided?

[Debbie Abrahams]

My hon. Friend makes absolutely the right point. I commend her for her work on the Work and Pensions Committee to expose how important it is to get this right.

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[Mr Gauke]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One problem with the legacy system is that it does not cope with those people whose hours might fluctuate below and above 16 hours. The difficulties of moving from one regime to another can discourage people from taking extra hours. That is why it is so disappointing that we do not have cross-party support for these reforms. The Labour party has consistently called on us to pause and fix universal credit. It has done it again today, but in doing so, it has, on more than one occasion, resorted to scaremongering. It is increasingly clear that when it says pause and fix, it means scrap and rewind to the failed system of the past.

[Ruth George]

If the Minister is so convinced of all the facts about universal credit that he claims, why does he not release the post-implementation review that the Department was apparently putting together and give us the full details of how universal credit is working, instead of relying on a study of a tiny sample of single people without jobs that was conducted more than two years ago, before the cuts, in order to make these wild claims?

[Mr Gauke]

What we have released is analytically robust. It enables us to compare with a matched sample, which becomes harder to do as there are fewer single people on jobseeker’s allowance. The reality is that the evidence points to universal credit getting people back into work quicker and ensuring that people are more likely to progress in work.

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[Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak on this subject yet again. As we have heard, it is the sixth debate on universal credit in this Parliament and the fourth in the past eight weeks. This gives me another opportunity to reiterate my support for universal credit, which encourages people to get into work and supports them while they are in work, with the overriding aim of simplifying an overly bureaucratic and complicated system by rolling six benefits into one.

However, the title of this debate is slightly different from the others, referring as it does to project assessment reviews carried out between 2012 and 2015, and subsequent documents as well. I wondered what the reason was for that. I suspect that the answer lies in three points. First, Labour Members think that there is a clever parliamentary tactic in tabling motions of this sort. Secondly, no particular benefit can be gained by looking at documents dating back to 2012 to 2015. That point has been made by other hon. Members, and it must be right—we have moved on significantly since then.

Thirdly, Labour Members appear not to not believe in the advantages of the universal credit system, as we have heard again in some of the speeches this afternoon. They risk sounding as though they think that the legacy system was all perfect whereas this system is not. That is not right. The legacy system was complex and bureaucratic. It trapped people into working for a limited period of only 16 hours. I am sure that we have all had constituents, as I have, who did not take on additional work because they calculated that they were better off staying on benefits in the legacy system than getting into work. I do not criticise that, because it was a perfectly logical and reasonable decision to make—I criticise the legacy system and the position that my constituents were put in at the time.

[Ruth George]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that under the tax credits system, working people could earn up to £5,000 a year more and still keep their working tax credit without losing a penny of it? I very much hope that he advised his constituents of that when they came to him for advice.

[Michael Tomlinson]

The “big bang” roll-out of the tax credits system was an absolute disaster that many of our constituents had to live through for a number of years.

I am disappointed that this motion fails to mention and to acknowledge the good words that we heard from the Chancellor—and not just words, but the additional £1.5 billion that was put in. Some hon. Members have mentioned it, but it could have been put into the motion. The shadow Secretary of State did say that she welcomed those measures, but what she said sounded a little bit mealy-mouthed, certainly to my ears. The hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) mentioned his support in principle for universal credit. I very much enjoyed listening to him speak, as I always do. He said that he was short of time, and I wish that he had had more time to develop his speech and take more interventions. It was a shame that he did not, because he was correct to say that the principle of universal credit is absolutely right. It was good to hear the SNP’s support for it.

In relation to the Budget, I have welcomed the £1.5 billion extra and the reduction in the waiting period. I want the Minister to address this specific question: can he confirm that there was a seven-day wait in the legacy system, and that we have now reduced the wait to zero days, making it shorter than it was even under the legacy system? I particularly welcome, as other Members have done, the payment of two weeks’ housing benefit element, which will not be repayable. That will help the most vulnerable to transition on to universal credit. Too often, during the debate, we heard reference to five weeks’ or six weeks’ wait, but we have not had clarity about the fact that people can a get a payment within five days of applying, or even on the day. I am sure that the Minister will confirm that when he gets to his feet.

I welcome the additional support, and it is disappointing that people have not been more vocal about it. But Citizens Advice Scotland, Citizens Advice, the chief executive of St Mungo’s and the chief executive of the Trussell Trust—my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) gave the full quote—have all voiced their support for the scheme.

I would like to mention another myth: the allegation that the universal credit hotline was a premium phone line, which of course it is not. I would be grateful if the Minister confirmed that the hotline is now free, and that by the end of the year all phone calls to the Department will be free. I welcome the opportunity to set out the advantages of the system and the additional money that has gone in to help the most vulnerable to transition on to universal credit. We should look to transfer the most vulnerable not only on to universal credit, but into work, and I believe that that is what the system does.

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[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

As someone who has worked for the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers on behalf of low-paid shop workers for nearly 20 years, I have been banging on about universal credit for many a year. It is a pleasure to see so many Members across both sides of the House taking such an interest in the policy. We are not surprised by that, because the policy will affect not just the 7 million households who will become claimants—an average of 10,800 households in each constituency—but the 2.5 million households who are currently on legacy benefits and will cease to receive anything because of the cuts to universal credit.

I welcome the constructive comments made by Members on both sides of the House about universal credit, and I have always tried to be constructive when I address the policy. I have set up the all-party group on universal credit, and I am pleased to see contributions being made to that group by Members from all parts of the House. I sit on the Work and Pensions Committee, which will be pleased to receive the report.

If the Government are open about scrutiny and they really want to learn and fix universal credit, why are they not publishing an impact assessment on it? It is not just about the reports; we last had an impact assessment on universal credit five years ago, almost to the day. Since then, almost £5 billion a year has been cut from that policy. The last impact assessment for universal credit stated:

“A comprehensive evaluation programme is being developed…The evaluation will need to meet the immediate need for feedback and evidence on implementation issues”.

Apparently, the evaluation programme will include

“ongoing monitoring, evaluation and analysis; a ‘live running review’ of implementation and delivery; a fuller evaluation of implementation and delivery and ongoing analysis of outcomes and impacts.”

I want the Minister to answer this question when he replies to the debate: where are those assessments of universal credit that the impact assessment of December 2012 said would be put in place? Have they actually been produced? If not, why not? If they have been produced, following that commitment, why have they not been published? Why have we waited for five years and seen £5 billion of cuts but still not seen any evidence from the Conservative party on how universal credit is affecting the hundreds of thousands of people now receiving it, and on how it will affect millions in future?

At the very least there should have been an assessment of the impact of those cuts from the July 2015 Budget. That Budget cut £3.2 billion from work allowances and nearly £1.5 billion with the two-child policy, but it was left to the IFS to tell us that 3 million working households with children will be £2,500 a year worse off and that work incentives for single parents and couples who both work are actually weakened under universal credit now that the work allowances have been cut.

Unlike under tax credits, if universal credit claimants work overtime, their next month’s universal credit payment is docked by 63% of whatever they earn. Where is the work incentive in that? If a parent earns an extra £100 in the run-up to Christmas to try to pay for some presents and give their family a decent holiday, they will see their next universal credit payment cut by £63. That is not a work incentive.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

The hon. Lady is speaking very well, and I am glad that she is raising these issues. Is she aware that for some families who now fall victim to the family cap on universal credit it does not pay to go out to work, because work will pay them less than the nursery fees required if they have a third child?

[Ruth George]

Absolutely. Childcare is a key issue when families are trying to raise themselves out of poverty, as the hon. Lady rightly says. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has found that 30% of children are now in poverty, and nearly two thirds of those are in working households. Some 8 million adults live in poverty in a household where someone is in work.

Universal credit was meant to address the problems of poverty and work incentives. It does not. The Government are refusing to publish the evidence needed to fix their own policy, which they claim is what they want to do. If they really want to fix universal credit before it is rolled out to another 6 million families, they need to publish not just these reports but a full impact assessment, laying their policy and themselves open to the scrutiny that this House and the public deserve.

[Several hon. Members rose—]