Universal Credit and Working Tax Credits

Sam Tarry Excerpts

Wednesday 15th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

We have heard the hon. Member for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill) absolutely eviscerating this disgraceful Government and the way that so many of our young people, whatever corner of the country they live in, live under the brutal face of Tory Britain. This Government are willing to give tax breaks to their rich pals in the City and blow billions on often failed covid contracts, at the same time condemning the young and lowest paid to a lifetime of hardship and debt.

In my constituency—these are shocking statistics—almost 19,000 households are now in receipt of either universal credit or working tax credits. Let me repeat that figure: 19,000. That is bigger than the majority of most Conservative Members. It is an enormous figure. It constitutes 35% of all the households in my constituency and more than 50% per cent. of the families with children. That clearly demonstrates the importance of universal credit, which helps to maintain people putting food on the table for their families and prevent them from being plunged into total and abject poverty. It is grim and it is shocking.

A significant number of claimants are already in work, in poorly paid, insecure, zero-hours jobs. That includes many of the frontline heroes who carried on working throughout the pandemic—nurses, porters in hospitals and people working on buses—while everyone in this House could work from the safety of their own homes. Is this how we repay them, by slashing £1,000 from their pay cheques? Indeed, research by the TUC has revealed this week that 2.3 million low-paid workers will be worse off as a result of this cut, increasing the already record-high poverty levels, and the move will do nothing to address in-work poverty, which is so important and which we should be addressing. Many of my constituents in Ilford are already holding down multiple jobs and doing all they can just to keep their heads above water.

To give just one of the many stories I have heard on the doorsteps of Ilford South, a young woman called Emily told me that she receives universal credit and uses it to support her young son. However, due to a change in her health circumstances, she was eligible to receive further support. She was told to wait three months for a telephone appointment, at which point she was informed that she had to have an in-person assessment. That was despite having doctor’s notes confirming her medical condition, and despite the fact we were in the midst of the second covid lockdown. Now, 15 months on, she is not only still awaiting confirmation of her case, but she faces losing a further £86 from the Government’s proposed universal credit cut.

Emily is understandably struggling to make ends meet. In her latest correspondence, she told me:

“I’m going to be losing £86 a month and I really don’t know how I’m going to survive.”

She speaks for millions of people across Tory Britain and others in similar circumstances. It is a disgrace that the Government are willing to abandon her and millions of others to their fate.

There is now universal opposition to these plans. It comes not just from charities, third-sector organisations and campaign groups—not to mention millions of the Government’s own voters—but six former Secretaries of State for Work and Pensions from their own Benches, including the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), whose constituency is not too far from Ilford, being just down the road in the other corner of Redbridge. They all agree that this money must remain in place. It would appear that the only thing that is truly universal about these plans is the opposition to them.

The Government must think again about their decision to make low-income families pay for the Government’s chronic mismanagement of the pandemic and economic recovery. They are completely and utterly out of touch with ordinary working people’s lives and reducing salaries now risks not only further worsening the impact of the recession, but plunging these people into a lifetime of misery and poverty. The £20 uplift must remain in place at least until after the pandemic is over and the economy is on a stable footing. It is moral, it is just and the Government should get a backbone and do it right away.