Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Monday 19th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

I am very sorry to hear of that. If there are specific cases, please do not hesitate to highlight them. Through the roll-out of the landlord portal, which has been warmly welcomed by social housing companies and local authorities, there is an opportunity for claimants and housing bodies to work together to manage this migration process smoothly.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

The Minister knows that the five-week delay under universal credit forces people into debt right at the start of their claim, which too often leads to rent arrears and other hardships. I welcome the new Secretary of State to her post. Will the Minister encourage her to take a fresh look at this indefensible five-week delay in particular?

[Justin Tomlinson]

As we have pointed out, those transitioning from legacy benefits will get the additional two weeks of housing benefit and, with the new measures announced, two weeks of either their employment and support allowance, their jobseeker’s allowance or their income support, as well as access to advance payments from day one. The key thing is that this system mirrors the world of work. For the vast majority of people, their aim is to get into work, and in work they would expect to be paid in arrears. They would have to deal with that at the same time as going back into work, whereas now the personalised work coach can provide support by giving them access to advance benefits and pointing them to the support offered by Citizens Advice and our wider universal credit support network. It is about providing that support as people prepare themselves for the world of work.

Universal Credit

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Everybody claiming universal credit has to wait at least five weeks before being entitled to payments, including those being moved across from previous benefits. The Secretary of State referred to the additional two weeks of previous benefits announced by the Chancellor in the Budget. How can Ministers justify stopping all benefits for a period of at least three weeks for people migrating from previous benefits on to universal credit?

[Ms McVey]

It will be a continuum. The payment cycle will be going from two weeks to four weeks, and this is actually extra money. They will be getting two weeks’ extra money because they will be getting the full period they are entitled to when it comes along after four weeks. This is not giving them less money, or even part of their money; this is two weeks’ extra benefit.

Youth Obligation

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Friday 26th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Over the course of the past year, I have tabled a number of parliamentary questions about the Government’s youth obligation support programme, which was introduced in April last year, and the answers to those questions have contained remarkably little information. I am delighted to see the Minister in his place, and I hope he will take this opportunity to provide the House with some more information to allow us to make at least an initial assessment of whether the programme is proving effective. At the very least, will he confirm to the House that such information will be forthcoming in the near future?

Just over two decades ago, I became the Parliamentary Private Secretary to Andrew Smith, who was the first holder of the post of Minister for Employment after the 1997 general election. We introduced the new deal for young people, which was a radical departure in state labour market intervention, and it has profoundly influenced all the programmes since.

By the way, as the youth obligation is the only current labour market programme for young people and is available only in areas where universal credit has been rolled out, there have been since April 2017—for the first time in two decades—parts of the country where there is no programme at all for young people. With universal credit being rolled out for new claims to every jobcentre by the end of the year, as I understand it, will the Minister confirm that we will again have a programme for young people in every part of the country by the end of the year?

Young people are still at a distinct disadvantage in the labour market. According to this month’s labour market statistics, the unemployment rate among 16 to 24-year-olds is 10.8%, compared with an overall rate of 4% for those aged 16 and over. The unemployment rate among young people has consistently been two and a half to three times the overall rate for quite a long time. Of course the employment rate—the overall rate and the youth rate—is much lower than the peaks we saw five or six years ago, but the introduction of the youth obligation is an acknowledgement, rightly, that youth unemployment remains too high.

More than one in 10 young people are out of work and looking for a job, when they ought to be building the skills to secure for themselves a lifetime of employment and in a position to contribute to the economy. There is also of course a disastrously large number of young people outside the system altogether—not in education, employment or training at all. The Government are therefore absolutely right to focus effort on young unemployed people.

The question is whether the current programme is any good. From the answers given by the Minister’s colleague, the Minister for Employment, the Government appear not to know whether it is any good, and indeed they appear not to have very much interest in finding out. I therefore hope that the Minister will be able to dispel that impression when he responds to this debate.

The only information provided in answers to my questions so far was in those from April and May, when I was told that, from when the youth obligation started in April 2017 to this February, 24,600 people had started on the programme and 9,300 were still on it. Is the Minister able to provide the House today, after another six months, with an update on those figures? As far as I know, there are no figures in the public domain other than those in the answer I received at that time. The obvious and important question is: what has become of the 15,300 who started on the programme and then left it? I asked a series of questions about this—for example, how many of them had gone on to an apprenticeship—and in reply to each the Minister’s colleague said that he did not know and that it would be disproportionately expensive to find out.

It is now 10 years since I was a Minister in the Department, but I cannot believe that the Department has forgotten the importance it attached at that time to evidence about effectiveness. Indeed, if the Minister is doubtful about the value of such data, he should read some of the speeches that the current Secretary of State made about the Work programme when she was the Minister responsible for employment. The Work Programme, for all its many faults, generated a great deal of valuable, published performance data. I understand that Ministers intend to publish comparable data for the Work and Health programme in due course, in some detail and with reasonable regularity, although I also understand that publication of that data has been delayed. It would be puzzling if Ministers really do not intend to gather, still less publish, evaluation data on the youth obligation.

On 26 April, I asked how many of those supported through the youth obligation had gone on to various destinations. The Minister for Employment replied on 1 May in a written answer, stating:

“It is not possible to say how many of them have subsequently gone on to (a) an apprenticeship (b) a traineeship and (c) a work placement without checking individual records, which would incur disproportionate cost.”

I asked how many young people had stopped receiving benefits since beginning the youth obligation, and an answer from 1 May stated:

“DWP does not hold this information as part of any centralised management information process. To answer this would require checking individual records at each Jobcentre, which would incur disproportionate cost.”

I tabled more questions on 6 September, and on 11 September the Minister for Employment replied, more encouragingly:

“The information requested is not currently readily available, however the Department does monitor requests we receive for new statistics and consider whether we can produce and release analysis that will helpfully inform public debate. The Department is therefore looking at this issue with a view to seeing what statistics could be produced on a regular basis.”

I hope that the Minister will provide us with an update on the Department’s thinking on the matter.

Although the Department is not able to say how the youth obligation is going, others have started to provide valuable information about the effectiveness of the programme. Their findings so far are not encouraging, and I want to quote this afternoon from two pieces of research. Centrepoint, drawing on funding from the Trust for London, commissioned the University of Warwick to evaluate the extent to which the youth obligation supports disadvantaged young people into employment, education or training. The researchers undertook longitudinal research in London and Manchester, including a survey of 80 youth obligation participants. Centrepoint has compiled interim findings, with a final report due to be published in the spring. Those interim findings concluded that only around half of those who started the youth obligation programme remained on it for the whole six-month period. That was not generally because the participants found work or entered training; instead, there were three key reasons for withdrawing from the programme.

First, 45% of London participants and 40% of Manchester participants left the programme because of continuing, pre-existing difficulties in their lives, such as homelessness, drug or alcohol problems, or mental health issues. Secondly, 45% of London participants and 57% of Manchester participants left because they ran into a specific problem, and afterwards—through fear, embarrassment or uncertainty about their continued status on the programme—did not go back. Thirdly, 10% of London participants and 3% of Manchester participants left because they did not like the programme. That included two participants with learning difficulties who found the activities they were asked to engage in impossible without support, which they said they were not offered.

Research found that the most positive aspect of the programme was the initial engagement, and nearly two thirds of participants thought that making an individual plan that identified their interests and the support they wanted was helpful. Beyond that the focus was on practical mechanisms for identifying and applying for jobs, such as how to write a CV and use websites. In the experience of those who took part, there appeared to be little acknowledgement of whether the participant was ready to find work, or of the specific barriers that many participants faced or how to mitigate them. For example, one participant with low qualifications commented:

“They just tell you how to make a CV. Then they tell you to make it a different way.

Like every day, that’s all we did”.

Most participants were happy with their work coach, but there did not seem to be much substantive personalisation. Participants rarely noted that they had been offered access to particular activities or services to meet their specific aspirations, or additional or specialised support to address their more complex needs. Despite the complex needs of quite a number of the participants, referrals outside Jobcentre Plus were rare. In interviews, participants noted that they thought their work coach did not have time to discuss issues not directly related to looking for work.

A significant group of participants held very negative views about Jobcentre Plus and expected to be treated poorly. This made them less likely to disclose issues that were hindering their ability to work, such as worsening mental health or addiction issues. It also resulted in some participants viewing reasonable advice from the Jobcentre very negatively. In both London and Manchester, the sanction rate for those on the youth obligation was higher than for the comparator group claiming benefits in a non-youth obligation area. Some 36% of London youth obligation participants were sanctioned at some point in the past year, compared with 24% in non-youth obligation areas.

The second piece of research I want to draw on has been published today by the Young Women’s Trust. It is brand new and I appreciate that the Minister and his officials may well not yet have had a chance to consider it. However, it, too, is a useful and informative piece of work. The research surveyed over 700 young Jobcentre Plus users in the UK over three years. It conducted interviews with staff in 13 jobcentres across three London boroughs and conducted focus group interviews with 28 young people aged between 18 to 25 who were living across 10 different London boroughs. It concluded that the youth obligation is misunderstood by Jobcentre Plus staff and is patchy in its implementation. Young people’s employment outcomes are not recorded and there is little plan for support beyond six months. Only a third of young women and two fifths of men surveyed felt they were getting personalised support from their work coach. Some 21% of black, Asian and minority ethnic jobseekers said they were treated unfairly by Jobcentre Plus staff, compared with 15% of white jobseekers.

One youth obligation manager described their package for young people as intense specialist support for six months, which I think is what Ministers intended. Another manager, however, explained that over the course of six months they

“have two workshops where young people can learn how to write a good CV and meet providers”.

That appeared to be it. Managers in all the boroughs studied acknowledged that they do not monitor referrals and that there is no effective monitoring system in place, as the Minister’s difficulty in answering my parliamentary questions also illustrates. The policy, as I understand it, is that after six months on the programme, if young people do not have a job they should go on to a mandated apprenticeship or voluntary work experience. That is not happening in practice, according to the published research. In a small survey of voluntary sector service providers who work in youth employability and training, 79% were completely unaware of the youth obligation scheme, including a fair number of those who work with their local Jobcentre Plus on a weekly or monthly basis.

The report presents the positive conclusion that there has been a 17% increase in the number of users saying that the jobcentre helped to motivate them in their job search since 2016. However, it also reports that of the young women using Jobcentre Plus over the last three years, 52% have ranked their experiences as humiliating and 65% as stressful and that 63% have felt ashamed to go to the jobcentre.

It is clear from both pieces of research that the programme is not going well. I understand that one of the problems for the Department is that the universal credit IT system does not provide the basic information that would allow an assessment of how the programme is doing—information that was routinely provided under the older systems. I recognise that providing evaluation data may well not be the top priority among the current difficulties with the universal credit IT system, which I have been following closely for the last eight years, but I am sure the Minister will agree that it needs to be fixed.

I am encouraged that the Minister’s colleague told me in his written answer last month that the Department is considering what statistics could be produced on a regular basis, and so I want to finish by suggesting what some of the statistics ought to be. I would hope they could be produced at least on a half-yearly or perhaps on a quarterly basis—statistics on the Work programme were published quarterly.

We need to know how many people have gone on to the youth obligation in the latest period and how many have left it, and how many were on the programme at the beginning of the period and at the end. It would also be helpful to know something about the age, geographic spread and gender of participants. For those who have left the programme, the crucial information we need is where they have gone: how many have gone on to an apprenticeship, in line with the policy intent; how many have gone on to a traineeship or work placement; how many have gone into education or training; how many have got a job; and how many have stopped claiming benefit but not started work or training. Finally, what is the sanction rate for those on the programme?

I welcome the fact that, as I understand it, by the end of this year we will again have a nationwide labour market support programme for unemployed young people, but we need to know how effective it is. At risk of teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, I make the obvious point that that requires at least basic data to be recorded, collected centrally and published. At the moment, none of that is being done for this programme. I hope the Minister can provide some reassurance that it will soon start being done, for the Department’s benefit and the benefit of us all.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Guy Opperman)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) on securing this debate. I have been asked to respond because the Minister for Employment sadly cannot be here.

Everyone on the Government Benches acknowledges that the right hon. Gentleman should be on the Opposition Front Bench, given his massive experience at the Department for Work and Pensions, and I welcome this opportunity both to debate this matter and to discuss in the more detail the subject of youth employment, which I think motivates every single Member of Parliament. We all want to improve the life chances of those whom we represent.

Nationally, the employment rate for 18 to 24-year-olds not in full-time education is 77%, which is up eight percentage points from 69% in 2010, and only 4.3% of young people aged 16 to 24 are unemployed or not in full-time education, which is a fall of 350,000 since 2010. Moreover, the national unemployment rate for this age group is 10.8%, as the right hon. Gentleman set out, which is a record low. It is worth commenting briefly that the decrease in youth unemployment is markedly better than that in the EU. When one compares our record low youth unemployment rate with that in Spain, at 34%, Italy, at 32%, France, at 21%, and Greece, at 39%, one realises that there has genuinely been a transformation, and one that I believe is among the driving successes of this Government. We all accept, I believe—I think the right hon. Gentleman accepts this—that the single biggest driver of social mobility and improvement of life chances is work, and the reality is that the universal credit programme and the Government reforms since 2010 are helping to create an employment revolution in this country, which is a massive improvement on the old system.

The statistics reflect a real achievement, but while this is worth celebrating we must not be complacent. That is why the Government have introduced a wide range of support for younger people. The principle of support for young people is well known to the right hon. Gentleman; it has dated back through many different Governments and generations and has been developed by the DWP in collaboration with a variety of organisations. We recognise that providing early targeted help at the start of a young person’s adult life helps them secure work and avoid unemployment. It is in that context that we introduced the youth obligation support programme.

The programme is for people aged 18 to 21 who make a new claim in a UC full service jobcentre. It is worth understanding how this programme came into being, and I will briefly outline that. We believe it takes the best types of support that previous individual evaluations have shown to work and puts them together in a single programme. The support starts with the intensive activity period. In 2016, the Department published an evaluation of this approach by the Institute for Employment Studies. It reported that it had an immediate positive behavioural effect on participants. It increased their confidence, and meant they engaged in a wider range of job search activities and made job applications to a higher standard. Earlier this year, the Work and Pensions Committee recognised in its youth employment report of 2018 that the Department had conducted a good quality trial of intensive activity. It said that the intensive activity element of the youth obligation should help young people overcome key barriers to work. We believe it encourages young people to think more broadly about their skills and job goals and identify any training they may need.

An example that applies to both the programme under discussion and the traditional model for younger people are sector-based work academies, which last for up to six weeks and include work experience, some bespoke training and a guaranteed interview for a real apprenticeship or other job. The Department published a quantitative impact assessment in 2016 that showed that young people who took part in this type of support spent on average considerably more days in employment and considerably fewer days on benefit than those who did not take part, and I know it had some success in the right hon. Gentleman’s constituency of East Ham, particularly utilising the work of his local colleges.

[Stephen Timms]

I am grateful for the way the hon. Gentleman is answering my questions. Does he have any information about how many participants on the youth obligation programme had the opportunity of the sector-based work academy to which he refers?

[Guy Opperman]

I am going to come to the specific points the right hon. Gentleman raises on numbers and data, but let me make a quick point before returning to my speech. We are in utter agreement that data and statistics are needed on a long-term basis—no one is disputing that—and he will know from his knowledge of the DWP that it likes to focus on long-term figures. However, I am not in a position to give individual numbers in answer to that specific question.

However, the right hon. Gentleman surely accepts that sector-based work academies, which occur in many different types of profession but in particular teaching, retail, hospitality, transport and logistics, social care, manufacturing and engineering, are one of the most successful innovations that apply to all young people whether on the YOSP or the traditional support provided by jobcentres.

In addition, there are traineeships. Like the right hon. Gentleman, I have visited a multitude of jobcentres. In the last year, I have been from Hastings and Chichester in the south to Banff in northern Scotland, from Basildon to Blackpool last Friday, to Birmingham and Lambeth in London, and in the last four years I have hosted a jobs fair in Hexham and worked with my jobcentre, and I have seen the impact of traineeships, which are another part of the YOSP that are utterly key. I must mention Release Potential in my constituency, which provides these traineeships for younger people on an ongoing basis up and down the country, and I have seen their success.

The right hon. Gentleman will realise that this programme began only in April 2017 and that it is still being rolled out around the country. More than 500 jobcentres are now offering this support, but some started only this week. I accept that others started in April 2017, but I believe that the programme still has to be rolled out to 22 jobcentres before completion takes place at the end of this year. In his own area, jobcentres have strong links to Barking and Dagenham College, and there is also specialist guidance on training, apprenticeships, the Prince’s Trust, the movement to work programme, the construction skills programme and English language classes.

I want to address a couple of points that the right hon. Gentleman raised. I take on board his suggestions, which have been noted, on statistical evaluations and pathways. He will understand that the Department takes these matters very seriously, and I will ensure that they are taken back to the Minister for Employment. As I have said, the programme is still being rolled out, and the automated management information process is still being developed as we speak. He raised the matter of young people in particular, and there is one point on which I want to push back. He said that the was no other programme for young people, but he will surely know that the Department is committed to providing targeted support for all young people, including those who are still claiming jobseeker’s allowance or claiming through the universal credit live service. The traditional JSA includes basic skills training, traineeships and support funded through organisations such as the Prince’s Trust. There are also opportunities involving sector-based work academy placements for those individuals. It would therefore be wrong to suggest that there is no other programme over and above the youth obligation support programme.

I repeat that we collect information on each individual claimant, but there is not at this stage an aggregated assessment of the kind that the Department traditionally produces. However, the right hon. Gentleman will under- stand that this programme started only in April 2017, that it has not finished being rolled out and that in some jobcentres it started only in the last week. With respect, therefore, I would say to him that we believe the programme is becoming more mature every day, that we are continuing to test and learn and that we are holding workshops with work coaches to get their insight into what works well and into the local barriers that 18 to 21-year-olds can face in the labour market. We are also collating and sharing good practice, and we will obviously take on board the reports that he has outlined today, including the one that came out just this morning. We are genuinely committed to ensuring that any 18 to 21-year-old, whether they are from East Ham or Hexham, Carlisle or Cardiff, has the ability to work towards securing an income, to develop their skills and to improve their life chances. After all, that is what this is all about.

Question put and agreed to.

Employment and Support Allowance Underpayments

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Newton]

My hon. Friend is a doughty champion for the most disadvantaged people in society, so I would expect no less a question from him. To reassure him, I visited the main centre in Oldham where we are contacting people who we feel may have been affected and then beginning to collect information, so that we can ensure that we pay them what they are owed. We are being very careful to ensure that we send letters, and in the letter there is information about a helpline that people can call.

We are very happy to speak to people’s carers. As my hon. Friend says, some people with severe disabilities may not be able to engage with us, and people with mental health conditions may be anxious and not want to engage with us. I was incredibly impressed by the care, compassion and professionalism of my colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions in Oldham who are undertaking this very important exercise.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

The National Audit Office did not find the Department to be transparent when it was raising concerns about this; it found it to be defensive. Unfortunately, that has characterised the Department for a number of years around universal credit, as the NAO has pointed out in the past. With this much bigger transfer ahead, which the Minister mentioned, are there any proposals to change the culture of the Department and to be more open when problems of this kind are raised?

[Sarah Newton]

I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s question, and I deeply respect the work that he has done throughout his time in Parliament to stand up for the most vulnerable people in our society. I can reassure him that we are learning a lot of lessons from what happened when we migrated people from incapacity benefit to ESA. I think he was in the House when the Labour party created the work capability assessment and ESA. We have been working very hard to improve that benefit and to ensure that we learn lessons.

These problems arose because of the way that the migration was handled, and I am determined to ensure that when we go forward into UC, claimants are involved, to ensure that they are not missing out on any of the benefits to which they are entitled. We are working very closely with disabled people, people with health conditions, charities, citizens advice bureaux and disability rights organisations to ensure that we get that process absolutely right.

Universal Credit

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms McVey]

I will indeed give way. Who shall I choose from this merry bunch?

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

One of the representations the Secretary of State will have received is from the Residential Landlords Association saying that a majority of its members are now not willing to let accommodation to universal credit claimants because they quickly get into arrears and cannot pay the rent. Is she proposing some change to address that specific problem?

[Ms McVey]

As the right hon. Gentleman will know, we have made various changes to make sure that we can pay direct to the landlords—that we can give alternative payments. It is only right that we do that. However, when we talk about the difficulties that claimants have got into, it is good to look at the legacy benefits and Labour’s track record. Between 1997 and 2010, benefits claimants’ debt to local authorities increased by £1.8 billion through overpayment and errors in the legacy system. On tax credits, introduced by the Opposition, claimants got into £5.86 billion-worth of debt through error and overpayments. That is a shameful record from the Opposition.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

The right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) is absolutely right to say that change is urgently needed, and I hope that her Front-Bench colleagues will have heard that. Of all the many flaws in universal credit, the worst is the five-week delay between claiming and being entitled to benefit. Ministers can justify this—the Secretary of State had a go at doing so again yesterday—only in the case of people who have just left a monthly paid job and therefore have a month’s salary in the bank. The reality is that a very large number of people do not have a month’s salary in the bank when they make a claim for universal credit. Many are paid weekly or on zero-hours contracts; for all sorts of reasons, many are simply not in the position to have that much money in the bank. I spoke to a claimant on Merseyside at a time when the delay was even longer than it is now. She told me that the jobcentre had sent her away to live on water for six weeks. She reached the point at which she attempted to take her own life. Five weeks without support is not a realistic or acceptable feature of this benefit.

[Chris Philp]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for raising that important case. Would his constituent not have been eligible to receive an advance payment, had she applied for one? They are now available at 100%.

[Stephen Timms]

She was not told about the availability of an advance payment. They are now being better publicised than when she made her claim, but the problem with advance payments is that people are being plunged into debt right at the start of their claim. For many, it is impossible to get out of debt once the system has forced them on to that slope. The result is that they have to go to food banks. We know that food bank demand rockets when universal credit comes in, because people get behind with their rent and other debts mount. I say to Conservative Members—many of them are fully aware of this—that this is not the way to treat our fellow citizens. Universal credit must be changed to stop this happening.

[Heidi Allen]

I appreciate the right hon. Gentleman giving way, not least because I might run out of time and not be able to say all that I want to say in my speech, including suggesting that it might be a wiser idea to make the advance payment into a first payment. It could be a bit like when people who do not pay their last month’s rent do not get their deposit back. We would look to take something back if anything was due, right at the end of the claim. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that we should turn the advance payment on its head so that it is no longer a loan that we need to take back?

[Stephen Timms]

The hon. Lady makes an interesting suggestion, and I hope that her Front-Bench colleagues will listen to it. We certainly need urgent change on this point.

Ministers have, perhaps understandably, developed a tin ear to the voices that they should have been listening to over the past eight years, as the warnings about what they were getting into were being sounded. They have not been listening to those warnings, but I hope that they are at least listening to the Residential Landlords Association. They might have heard Paul Cunningham, the chair of Great Yarmouth Landlords Association, on the radio last week, as I did. He said that the majority of landlords in Great Yarmouth were now unwilling to let property to universal credit claimants because they inevitably got into arrears with their rent. He said:

“It is a social experiment that’s gone wrong”.

Of the Department for Work and Pensions, he said:

“They remain in denial about the system”.

His concluding point was that

“it doesn’t make business sense to let a property to a tenant who has no idea of when their claim is going to be processed or how much money they are going to get, and who will invariably end up in arrears”.

That is the reality of the experience of private landlords, let alone the organisations representing claimants that have been making submissions to the Government.

Among the many representations that the Government have received about managed migration, they will have seen the report prepared by the Resolution Foundation, and I hope that they have looked at it carefully. A lot of the submissions expressed deep foreboding about where we are heading with the managed migration programme. The Resolution Foundation made the following recommendation, which I commend to Ministers:

“The managed migration should only begin when the DWP has shown service levels meet a standard agreed with external experts including SSAC”—

the Social Security Advisory Committee—

“and the Work and Pensions Committee. We suggest this should be that 90 per cent of new claims are paid in full and on time”.

The recommendation—an excellent one—is that managed migration should not commence until that level of service can be achieved, and I hope that the Minister will be able to respond to that when he winds up. I commend that idea to him.

It is clear that we are heading into very difficult territory if this goes ahead on the current basis, as is still likely. The Conservative party has been warned about what happens to parties when they go ahead with such projects, given the prospects for universal credit. There is now, however, a chance—there is a moment here—for Ministers to fix these problems. They could take the necessary action; the Chancellor could do so in the Budget on Monday week. I urge them to stop the roll-out until these problems are fixed and not to press ahead in the way that is being proposed. Universal credit was a perfectly sensible idea. Unfortunately, its implementation has been very badly handled. The problems went right back to the start, when the July 2010 Green Paper stated:

“The IT changes that would be necessary to deliver”—

universal credit—

“would not constitute a major IT project.”

How wrong that was, sadly.

Universal Credit

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alok Sharma]

As I have just said, 85% of childcare costs can be recouped under universal credit, which is an improvement on the legacy system.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I welcome the reports of imminent reform. Ministers can justify the five-week delay in universal credit only in cases where people have just left a monthly paid job. Yesterday, he told the House:

“The five-week wait has no savings implications for the Exchequer.”—[Official Report, 15 October 2018; Vol. 647, c. 395.]

Will he therefore now scrap it?

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Monday 15th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Guy Opperman)]

Some 10,000 of my hon. Friend’s constituents are benefiting from automatic enrolment, with thanks to the 1,800 employers involved, and nationally workplace pension provision for women and young people has now doubled in the last five years.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

T8. Ministers defend the five-week wait for universal credit on the basis that employees will have had a month’s pay in their bank account when they left their previous job. Does the Minister accept that that case simply does not apply to employees paid weekly or those on zero-hours contracts?

[Alok Sharma]

I have huge respect for the right hon. Gentleman, as he knows, but that is precisely why we introduced this £1.5 billion of support earlier this year, which means people can get advances up front—up to 100%—and those on housing benefit get a two-week run-on, which is money that does not have to be repaid.

The Secretary of State’s Handling of Universal Credit

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Wednesday 11th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Margaret Greenwood]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point about cuts.

The Secretary of State’s second claim was that the report did not take into account the impact of recent changes made by the Government. This is curious.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I agree with everything that my hon. Friend is saying. She has already quoted the National Audit Office report. From that quotation, does it not sound to her as though the NAO’s view is that this project should be paused and fixed?

[Margaret Greenwood]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I am going to make some progress now because there have been so many interventions, although I am pleased that so many people are here today.

The head of the NAO said clearly in his letter of 4 July:

“Our report was fully agreed with senior officials in your Department. It is based on the most accurate and up-to-date information from your department. Your department confirmed this to me in writing on…6 June and we then reached final agreement on the report on…8 June.”

The Secretary of State refused to back down and said again in a letter to the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee—my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier)—dated only yesterday that, although she had full confidence in the NAO and its head,

“that does not mean the Department will always agree with all of the judgements reached by the NAO.”

Will she tell us now, once and for all, whether or not her Department agreed the report with the NAO in writing on 8 June?

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Universal credit was a good idea, but the problems we are seeing in our constituencies are very significant. The Trussell Trust told us in its briefing for this debate that when universal credit is fully rolled out in an area, demand for food banks in that area goes up by 52% in the following year compared with 13% in areas where universal credit has not been fully rolled out. I noticed that the National Audit Office looked specifically at what the Trussell Trust said about demand for food banks where universal credit has been fully rolled out. The NAO states that its analysis

“aligns with the Trussell Trust’s.”

Indeed, the Department’s own analysis—the survey that the Secretary of State referred to, which was published last month—makes the point, as the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) has told the House already, that four out of 10 claimants in both the survey’s waves that were looked at were experiencing difficulties keeping up with bills. That is a much higher proportion of people facing hardship than has been the case with the previous system.

Why is universal credit causing much greater hardship than the previous system? Above all, it is for the very straightforward reason that people have to wait for five weeks before they are entitled to anything other than a loan once they have applied. A lot of people—I think we can all understand why—struggle to survive during those weeks. The theory was this: someone who has just left their job has a month’s salary in the bank that will see them through for a month; and after the usual waiting days, their money will start to come in. But a very large number of people do not have a month’s salary in the bank. There are a lot of good reasons why that is the case, but the most obvious is that people are often paid weekly. A very large number of people are paid weekly, but Ministers—I asked the former Secretary of State about this some years ago—have never had an answer to how those people are supposed to survive. I am grateful that the Secretary of State has told the House that she is listening and that she wants to work cross-party to fix these problems, and I very much welcome the fact that last October the delay was reduced from six weeks to five, but a gap of five weeks is asking too much of people who very often have virtually nothing in the bank when they make their claim.

[Ruth George]

Ministers have been saying that the advance payments solve the problem of the long wait, but the evidence we are getting from the Trussell Trust, among others, is that the high rates of repayment of those advances mean that they do not solve anything, but just prolong the debt that people are in.

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If people are forced to depend on an advance right at the beginning of their claim, they are by definition plunged into debt right at the start. I am pleased that the Secretary of State has I think told us today, in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), that she will look at the repayment periods and, hopefully, offer a less demanding repayment schedule than is the case at the moment. However, just plunging people into debt at the beginning of a claim is a very serious problem.

The Trussell Trust, which I have referred to, said that we should pause the roll-out of universal credit to fix the problems. My hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) made that plea from the Opposition Front Bench, as she has done repeatedly and rightly. The Secretary of State can perhaps discount those representations, but she should weigh carefully what the National Audit Office said, to which attention has already been drawn today. Its report said that the Government should

“ensure the programme does not expand before business-as-usual operations can cope with higher claimant volumes.”

I very much hope that the Secretary of State and her fellow Ministers will weigh that cautionary note very carefully indeed.

Universal Credit

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms McVey]

I did not know my hon. Friend also spent his formative years in Liverpool. There are so many Conservative Members who spent their formative years and grew up in Liverpool. [Interruption.] I smile because there are so many of us even in this Department.

My hon. Friend is quite right. This is what we are about: getting more people into work, which we have done—and significantly so. Now we are reaching out to help even more people, significantly so.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

For eight years Parliament’s only reliable information about the status of universal credit has come from the National Audit Office. Ministers have consistently responded with denials and cover-up statements that, as the Secretary of State has acknowledged this week, were simply untrue. Might her apology herald a new openness about the very real problems with the universal credit project?

[Ms McVey]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for mentioning my openness and the fact that I was willing, by myself, to come and apologise for using the wrong words. People who know me will always say about me that I am open, that I am straight and that I say it as it is, which I will do. Equally, if we need to make more changes, which I have done from the moment I got here—I did not seek leave to appeal to the Court of Appeal because I did not feel it would have been right; and I looked at the position of kinship carers and did not think it was right, so we changed it, as we did for the 18-to-21 group—I am more than happy to change things when we can, if we can.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms McVey]

I was delighted to visit my hon. Friend’s constituency and local jobcentre and to visit the Greenhouse Café, which he champions and which helps vulnerable people to get closer to the workplace. On the question that he and the work coaches raised about the advance, those advances could be given up to 100%, and with the personal relationship that the work coaches have, through this training they can assess what the right needs are. That is the right thing to do.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

One of the concerns raised by the National Audit Office is that the Department does not really know who the vulnerable claimants are, and particular problems are being caused by the very long delay before people are entitled to their benefit. The right hon. Lady’s predecessor took an important step by reducing the minimum wait from six weeks to five. Will she commit to taking that further and reducing the period further still?

[Ms McVey]

Universal credit is all about the relationship with the work coach. They get to know their claimants and their claimants’ needs, so it is very much a tailor-made benefit. We as Ministers have always said that, should we need to adapt and change universal credit so that it best supports the individual, we will do just that. I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman welcomed the changes that we have already made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alok Sharma]

May I commend my hon. Friend on all the work she does in her constituency? Youth unemployment is at a record low—it is 40% lower than it was under the last Labour Government—and programmes such as the youth support programme are available to help individuals. We value young people. It is about time that Labour did the same.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

A Minister suggested earlier that the policies of the Labour Government had not reduced poverty. Are Ministers not aware that child poverty was reduced by 800,000 over 13 years thanks to the policy of the Labour Government? Are they also aware that it is now rocketing?

[Alok Sharma]

As the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), made clear, since 2010 there are 300,000 fewer children living in absolute poverty. As we have heard, the route out of poverty is work. We have record levels of employment, and that is something we should all welcome across the House.