Universal Credit (EAC Report)

Viscount Brookeborough Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2022 Grand Committee

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful for being allowed to speak in the gap. I apologise for not giving notice; I did not think I was going to be here. I had not even noticed that the debate was going on.

The report led by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, seems excellent. I am not surprised by the disappointment in the reaction. I was a member of an ad hoc committee on financial exclusion that reported in 2017. We did some of it on universal credit, although we did not go into the same depth. I agree with everything that has been said.

In the time I have, I want briefly to comment on people and mental welfare. Mental welfare has become an increasingly important topic, led by Prince William and others. It really is important and, as things do not go so well, it becomes more and more important.

One of the problems is that universal credit is too complicated. We have just heard that it is so complicated that we do not understand it. People feel like criminals when they go through this process; I will come on that in a minute. The five-week wait puts people in debt. The Government will argue that that is not the whole reason, but we know that there is an increase in the number of people who are going into debt, for one reason or another, as a result of universal credit.

We went to Toynbee Hall, among other places. As noble Lords may be aware, this is an amazing charity that supports disadvantaged people. Many things struck me there. One was a lady who I and others were talking to. She said, “I just pray that you can give me some help. This is my correspondence about universal credit”—and it was a full lever arch file. She could not understand it and we could not understand it. All it said was, “Thank you for the answer to your last question. Will you please answer the following? Thank you for the answer to that; will you please do this?” She was at her wits’ end and felt she was being criminalised.

The next problem is the wait for money and people going into debt. This has a far greater effect than the Government ever seem to accept. The low-income group is an incredibly proud group of people. They care for their pennies, worry about the food they buy for their families and manage their expenses in an amazing way. Then a change in system dictated by government puts them into debt. They say, “We’ve never been criminals; we’ve always obeyed everything. But, to me, being in debt is a crime”. It does not just hit them; they are destroyed by this.

Therefore, when the Government say that they do help but there will be some people in debt, take a moment to understand the hundreds of thousands of people who, first, are made to feel like criminals because they have to fill in so many forms and answer so many questions and, secondly, feel like criminals because they are not able to hold their heads up and say, “I have never owed anybody anything”. Something like 40% of the population are not able to repair their washing machine out of cash—and we then do this to them. I ask the Minister whether the Government would consider this further. It brings you to tears to listen to them, when you can do nothing whatever to help. We have devised a system that has taken them away from their careful life planning —not borrowing, because they hate it, and not stealing, because they are not criminals. We then put them into this and, in three weeks, they are in debt—and, as far as they are concerned, they are criminals.