Universal Credit: Delayed Roll-Out Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Work and Pensions
Sarah Olney
Main Page: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)Department Debates - View all Sarah Olney's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
Universal Credit: Delayed Roll-Out
Sarah Olney Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Will Quince
I thank my hon. Friend for his question and the constructive way in which he put it, but I must respectfully disagree with him. There is no five-week wait. People are able to access their advance on day one.
Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)
Can the Minister tell us whether we can now expect to see an improvement to the kind of delays that many applicants are experiencing in their applications being processed? Will the Minister commit himself to publishing some statistics so that we can see whether the impact of this delay has resulted in an improvement to those kinds of delays?
Will Quince
I am a little confused, because my understanding is that those performance stats are indeed available. The Department has a very good record on payments and payment timeliness. Can we improve? Of course we can, and I meet with officials on at least a weekly basis to discuss that. In many cases, it is down not just to the Department but to how the claimant provides information. We are putting in additional resource, where appropriate, to help people to help themselves to get us that important information that we need to process the claims.