Universal Credit and Working Tax Credits
Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
The Government give the impression that they do not think £20 is a lot of money. Although having and spending income is important, it is vital that those who do not have to count the pennies do not forget about everyone else. For many people, £20 is not a box of biscuits from an organic store in west London but what is spent on an entire week’s food shop. The Facebook group “Feed your family on a budget” was set up last year by one woman who managed to do just that on a £20 budget, and that group alone—it is not a unique initiative—has more than 340,000 members. The real impact of taking £20 away from 5.5 million households across the UK is people skipping meals, unable to feed their children, and even more reliance on food banks, which are being used more than ever before—more even than before the pandemic.
On Monday, the Secretary of State suggested that people could make up £20 by working two extra hours. The Government consistently demonstrate that they do not understand that, for many, universal credit is an in-work benefit and that work has other expenses, such as transport and childcare, which mean that claimants will need to work at least another six hours a week to make up for the cut, not two.
Some of my constituents will face a £30 a week loss or even more, because, as we have seen so many times before, the Government have failed to understand the impact of their policies on the devolved nations. Parents who receive any amount of universal credit in Scotland—even as little as £20—are entitled to Scottish child payments, best start grants and best start food payments. Altogether, the cut could mean a loss of more than £1,700 a year. The Scottish Affairs Committee report on welfare published earlier this year noted that there appears to be “a good working relationship” between the Governments, but this cut suggests otherwise.
Of course, “just work more” is never as easy as this Government seem to think it is. There are 1.1 million single parents eligible for universal credit, many of whom need to work part time. I have raised this issue before by asking the Secretary of State to explain the disparity between universal credit and legacy benefits for young parents, where the former benefit acknowledged the additional burden of parenthood and provided the higher rate of payment usually given to those 25 and over. She has failed to provide an adequate explanation to me or 100 charities from around the UK, and indeed other hon. Members, who signed the letter I wrote about this.
The bottom line is that reducing an already inadequate safety net is not going to get more people into work. Research by the Trussell Trust shows that 900,000 people say they will not have enough money to travel to work or essential appointments, and this is a particular concern in rural constituencies such as North East Fife. If people cannot afford to get to work, how are they supposed to get those extra hours? It is a vicious cycle, only worse. Indeed, figures from Fife Council today suggest that crisis applications to the Scottish welfare fund have rocketed since the start of this financial year. This cut is taking place while the effects of the pandemic are still being felt, and we need to make sure that those people and families are supported.
Oral Answers to Questions
Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Will Quince
I have a lot of time for the shadow Minister, but however many times she asks the same question she is going to get the same response. The Government have focused support on UC and working tax credit claimants because they are more likely to be affected by the sudden economic shock of covid-19 than other legacy benefit claimants. I am not going to comment on the live litigation, but I would say that legacy claimants can make a new UC claim and benefit from the £20 a week increase; the Government encourage anybody to go on gov.uk and use one of the independent benefit calculators to check carefully their eligibility before they apply.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Dr Thérèse Coffey)
The nation is today uniting to toast an important milestone in the Prime Minister’s road map to recovery, with the long-awaited full reopening of the hospitality sector—thank God for that, given the rain we are suffering. The British public have stood up to the challenge of the pandemic and, while still being cautious, we need to get out there and spend our dosh. Let’s do our bit to support our communities, businesses and jobs, including more than 1 million workers who were furloughed and whom I hope we will now see back at work. As hospitality booms, I am sure that many more new kickstarters will be out there, able to hit the ground running.
Wendy Chamberlain [V]
Before the introduction of universal credit, single parents under the age of 25 received a higher rate of benefit payment in recognition of the increased costs of raising a child as a single parent, but that support has sadly not been extended to young single parents who are in receipt of universal credit. Does the Secretary of State agree with me and the assessment of One Parent Families Scotland that the omission amounts to a “young parent penalty”?
Dr Coffey
No; we took a sensible approach in having a differential rate for universal credit. Of course, if any of the hon. Lady’s constituents would like support to secure extra income via the child’s other parent, the Child Maintenance Service is there to help parents in such situations.
Income Tax (Charge)
Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
Over the past year, more people than ever before will have come into contact with our social security system. In March 2020, around 3 million people were on universal credit; in January, it was 6 million. They will have discovered that what is billed as society’s safety net is, in fact, full of fairly large holes. That has been the experience of my constituents in North East Fife, and it will be the same for hundreds of thousands of people throughout the UK.
A year ago, Liberal Democrats welcomed the Chancellor’s move to help to fix the net via the £20-a-week uplift in universal credit—that money was needed even before the pandemic began—but as time went on, it became clear that further support was not going to come. We called for an uplift to legacy benefits, which are disproportionately received by people with disabilities, but after initially being told that the universal credit uplift was a first step because its computer system was easier to change than the systems operating legacy benefits, it turned out that no uplift would be forthcoming.
We asked for extra support for unpaid carers—a group of people who are under-appreciated, overworked and absolutely need our further support—yet rather than the £20 a week that they need at the very least, the increase the Chancellor is giving in the Budget is a derisory 5p a day.
The decision to create another cliff edge by ending the universal credit uplift in six months means taking away £1,000 a year from those who need it the most. Freezing the personal allowance is a stealth tax that simply means that the poorest will pay an increasing proportion of their income in tax as many begin to make the transition from universal credit to employment as the economy recovers.
Last week, my team and I undertook a virtual visit to the jobcentre in Cupar. It was great to meet the fantastic team there, who have coped brilliantly with the required changes to working practices and are clearly making a difference to many who access their support. Despite that North East Fife team’s efforts, I have real concerns about how the Government plan to get people back into work.
Take-up of the kickstart scheme has so far been sluggish. To some extent, that is understandable, given the current restrictions, but when the scheme was launched I asked the Government to reconsider the requirement for businesses to be able to participate directly only if they had 30-plus vacancies, and although I am pleased that they eventually changed that decision, the initial decision prevented businesses in my constituency from moving forward more quickly with the scheme. The pandemic has hit the job prospects of those aged 18 to 24 most heavily; kickstart needs to succeed.
Tourism and hospitality are two key sectors in North East Fife, and I have previously raised in this place many examples of small businesses that are struggling because of covid-19 and lack of support. I welcome the continued 5% VAT rate for hospitality, which many Members from all parties called for, along with the furlough extension, but the reality is that the Budget offers very little for the cafés, shops and sports clubs at the heart of the local economy. Hairdressers such as Alex Thaddeus in Cupar also need a VAT reduction, which the hair and beauty industry has called for. The data tells us that women are also paying a disproportionate economic price during the pandemic.
The furlough extension is useful, but when I have spoken to businesses such as the Ship Inn and the Dory in the East Neuk, they tell me that it now comes with costs—it is not the same scheme that it was a year ago. That means that the small business owners who are currently unable to open face painful choices—accruing more debt, laying off staff or, indeed, closing altogether.
Many Members have raised the self-employed. I can think of many constituents who have found themselves excluded. Beneath the Chancellor’s rhetoric, there is no real change to the self-employment support; it is just that more people qualify now because they have 2019-20 tax returns.
Some of the Scottish Government’s support schemes are problematic. There are Barnett consequentials sitting on the desk of the Cabinet Secretary for Finance right now, and in Scotland we have been in harder lockdown for most of the past year. Just this morning, I spoke to my team regarding bed-and-breakfasts such as Lillian May in Newport-on-Tay, which is still waiting—and has been since December—for Fife Council to get further guidance from the Scottish Government on the administration of funding for bed and breakfasts.
Social Security
Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
It is a pleasure to follow the very powerful contribution of the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes). As a Greenockian myself, I certainly pay tribute to the heritage of the Clyde shipbuilders.
I am pleased to support today’s motion, which would uprate the payments made to sufferers of mesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases. Members have already spoken about the absolutely devastating impact of these terrible diseases on both the sufferers and their families. It is particularly sobering that The Guardian reported that, alongside Australia, the UK had the highest rates of mesothelioma in the world in 2019. According to the National Asbestos Helpline, 13 people in the UK die every day from conditions that were caused by exposure to asbestos. That is more than twice the number of people killed daily in road accidents.
It is important for us to reflect on the failure of this place, and across the country, to appreciate the dangers of asbestos. The link between asbestos and other related diseases was first established in the 1950s, but it took another 40 years for a UK-wide ban to be enforced. Despite the ban, asbestos is still all around us, and that is quite literally the case for the building that we are in right now, and also for other public buildings such as hospitals and schools.
The Health and Safety Executive plays a key role in such assessments, but, as other Members have highlighted, its funding has been slashed and the number of inspectors has dropped significantly, too. The HSE also plays an important role in research around these and other occupational-related diseases, and I urge the Minister to address that issue in his wind-up.
It is, of course, entirely right that these schemes are under discussion today to ensure that sufferers of asbestos-related illnesses are compensated. None the less, there is an outstanding issue regarding the equalisation of payments to dependants who make a claim after somebody who has had one of the illnesses has died. This is a question of fairness, which is, after all, why the schemes were established to begin with. Will the Minister set out whether further consideration has been given to the issue of equalisation?
We must also reflect on the level of uprating, which is in line with inflation and other disability benefits that have already been passed in this place. When the uprating statutory instrument came through the House, I spoke of the importance of ensuring that legacy benefits and also carer’s allowance received additional uplifts, in line with the universal credit uplift, to reflect the impact that the pandemic has had disproportionately on these groups. The same argument very much applies to the sufferers of asbestos-related illnesses and their families. Diagnoses such as these are incredibly difficult at any time for the person in question and their family. I can only imagine the incredible pain and trauma during a period such as this where restrictions mean being able to see only a very limited number of people. We must acknowledge just how difficult such diagnoses are for the person and for their family at all times, and especially over the past year, and it is right that support is there to reflect that. That will be particularly true for diseases such as mesothelioma, for which the life expectancy for sufferers is sadly very poor.
Early detection is incredibly important for occupational lung-related diseases, as it is for all such diseases and cancers. The national lockdowns will undoubtedly have had a huge impact on people coming forward with symptoms to get checked. I pay tribute to the fantastic work of my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) to make the case in this place for catching up with cancer, and to all the many charities and groups that have been making that argument, too. I urge the Government to bring forward further measures to ensure that we catch up with the national cancer backlog. One way that can be done is through proper investment in our healthcare service and cancer services. I hope the Chancellor will address the issue in the Budget tomorrow.
Finally, I note the work to support sufferers that the Minister outlined in his opening remarks, but ask him to address this point. On the uplift in the regulations, will he set out how he has taken into account the impact of covid-19 on people with mesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases, in terms of not only the direct impact on health outcomes for sufferers in relation to covid-19—which is, after all, a respiratory virus—but the indirect impact caused by shielding, increased costs and fewer opportunities to get symptoms checked?
Pensions
Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
The Government’s annual automatic enrolment evaluation report is a testament to the success of automatic enrolment, with the most recent edition from 2019 showing that more than 10.2 million employees have been automatically enrolled across more than 1.6 million employers. As a result, the number of eligible employees with a workplace pension has skyrocketed from 10.7 million, or 55% in 2012, to 18.7 million—nearly 90%—in 2018. That is very much to be commended.
I have spoken before about the importance of intergenerational fairness in our pensions policy. The decisions we take now will continue to have an impact decades down the line. The automatic enrolment policy means not just that people in the next 10 or 20 years will be better off in retirement, but that the generation who are just entering the workforce now will be, too.
As other Members have referenced, what is perhaps most notable about this order is not what it changes, but what it does not, with only the upper limit for the qualifying earnings band being revised, but not the lower limit or the earnings trigger, which the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda), and the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), referenced. While I understand the rationale for making this decision, which the Minister set out in his opening remarks, it is important that the progress made over the past decade does not start to slow down. In the words of the Government’s 2017 review, we must “maintain the momentum”.
The 2017 review contained proposals to lower the age threshold down to 18 and to abolish the lower earnings limit, with an estimated target date of delivery in the mid-2020s. We are now nearly four years on from that review and, as the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), mentioned, we have seen no change. Although “mid-2020s” can potentially be a bit elastic, that target is inching closer and today’s statutory instrument does not change the lower earnings limit either. Like others, I would be grateful if the Minister updated the House on progress towards the changes.
Another area that the review highlighted was the gaps in coverage, which particularly impact on people with multiple low-paid jobs and young people. The recent Supreme Court judgment on Uber workers has profound implications for the gig economy. Like the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, I would be grateful if the Minister set out how his Department intends to respond to that ruling in respect of auto-enrolment and set out a timescale.
A reduction in the earnings threshold for automatic enrolment would also help the ongoing problem of the gender pensions gap, and I thank the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) for tabling an early-day motion on that very topic. According to the Chartered Insurance Institute, the average pension pot for a woman aged 65 is just one fifth of the size of average pension pot for a 65-year-old man. Prospect estimated the gender pensions gap to be 39.5% when measured in terms of income, which is more than twice the size of the gender pay gap.
One factor in that inequality is that people with a salary below the earnings threshold are disproportionately women. More broadly, Members will be concerned to see reports in the press by the former Lib Dem Pensions Minister Steve Webb that thousands of women have been underpaid their state pension, so we would be grateful if the Minister updated the House on that issue, as well as setting out his plans to reduce not only the gender pensions gap but other gaps, including the gap in relation to those from black and other minority ethnic groups. Will he set out whether the Government will move forward with changes to automatic enrolment to help to deal with that? As I said at the beginning of my speech, automatic enrolment has been a success.
In the debate on the Ministerial and Other Maternity Allowances Bill, there was much discussion about the use of impact assessments so, finally, I would be keen to hear what assessment the Department for Work and Pensions has made of the impact of today’s changes on women and other minority groups. I look forward to the Minister’s winding-up speech.
Pensions
Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
As the Minister set out, this is a technical piece of legislation that has to be approved every year, and ensures that those who accrued pensions from contracted-out defined benefit schemes between 1988 and 1997 will receive increases in line with inflation. This will provide a positive impact to those people for whom that applies. I thank the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), Chair of the Select Committee, for raising his concerns. I entirely agree that it is incumbent on the Government proactively to reach out to those who may have missed out on moneys due to error or omission on the part of the Government or the Department.
There may now be fewer defined benefit schemes than there were 30 years ago, but many will not reach maturity for decades to come. That will also be the case for many of the people on DB schemes between 1988 and 1997, who will have many years left to work. We have recently spent time deliberating the importance of defined benefit schemes during the passage of the Pension Schemes Bill. I was pleased to see the Minister in the Lords provide reassurances on the Government’s plans for defined benefit schemes. The next steps lie with the regulator—after the Queen grants Royal Assent to the Bill, of course. Therefore, like the shadow Minister, I would be grateful if the Minister updated the House on what discussions have taken place with the regulator regarding defined benefit schemes and what timescales he estimates for the measures in the Bill, such as collective defined contribution schemes, to come into force.
Social Security
Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
It is hard to believe that more than four months have passed since we considered the Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Bill last autumn, and I welcome the annual process used to ensure that social security benefits and pensions are uprated. However, like others who have spoken in the debate, I must put on record my disappointment at the decisions taken. We are just weeks away from the new financial year, and it might seem hard to believe for some Members, but for millions of people across the country, that represents a terrifying reality.
There is still total uncertainty about what will happen to the universal credit uplift of £20 a week. Under the statutory instrument, the Government plan to take away £1,000 a year from the least well-off families in Britain. This is not scaremongering. The uplift may have been for one year, but people’s situations are arguably more precarious than they were a year ago, so this is quite simply the wrong thing to do. It is the wrong thing to do morally, and it is the wrong thing to do economically, because this money will not be stored away; it will be spent and reinvested back into the economy.
The support that the uplift represents is vital, yet the Government have spurned opportunity after opportunity to make it permanent or to at least extend it. They could have done it during the Secretary of State’s publication of uprating totals back in November, and they could have done it when the latest national lockdown was announced at the beginning of the year, but they did not. Then the Government abstained on the Opposition day motion in the name of the Leader of the Opposition, which puts us in a bizarre situation where Parliament has approved a motion calling for the uplift to be made permanent, yet the Government plan to do nothing about it. The idea of non-binding motions may be familiar to those of us who occupy this place, but in terms of communicating the will of the House to our constituents, I find that an abdication of responsibility from those on the Government Benches. During all that time, millions of families have had to live with the uncertainty of not knowing what their income will be come April. The Government need to provide support, but they also need to provide certainty.
I welcome the report published last week by the all-party parliamentary group on poverty, chaired by the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), calling for the uplift to be made permanent. As the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) said, support for that exists across the House. That is what the Government have to do. Otherwise, they will be letting people down at exactly the time when our safety net is meant to support them.
The report also calls for an uplift in legacy benefits, which I wholeheartedly echo and which has been recommended by the Work and Pensions Committee, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and many others. I do not think we in this place have given enough attention to the issue of people in receipt of legacy benefits. Many of my constituents who receive these benefits were very disappointed to see that they had been excluded from any uplift. It is not right. If we accept that universal credit claimants should receive an uplift, there is no reason why that should not have been extended. Instead, the only uplifts offered for legacy benefits are the inflationary ones detailed in the statutory instrument today. That means, for example, that someone who receives ESA and is in a work-related activity group will receive 35p per week extra, and someone who receives carer’s allowance will see a 30p per week increase. Many of my constituents regard these increases, at a time of such hardship for many of them, to be derisory. I urge the Government to consider uplifting legacy benefits. It is a question of fairness. The Minister, in his opening remarks, suggested that Opposition scaremongering is responsible for those on legacy benefits being deterred from making UC claims, but surely at such an uncertain time it is understandable that people choose to stick with what they know and what they have.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
Does the hon. Lady agree that people are also exposed to loan sharks and others who know how vulnerable people are at this time and prey on them?
Wendy Chamberlain
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention and agree absolutely: when people are desperate, they turn to whatever options are available to them and that stores up more difficulties for the future.
I turn now to the uplifting of pensions. It is right that the Government have taken steps, such as in the Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Act 2020, to ensure that the commitment to the triple lock is maintained. As I said during the passage of that Act, not only does the triple lock provide an important means to ensure that pensioners are properly supported in retirement, but it is a matter of intergenerational fairness. Small increases year on year now ensure that the generation who are currently just entering the workplace will also receive that support when it is time for them to retire.
This is a timely opportunity to discuss pensions, for important research was published today by the charity Independent Age—this was referred to by the Chair of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms)—detailing that older people miss out on £88 million a year from the warm home discount because they do not claim pension credit. Some 650,000 pensioners who are eligible for pension credit do not claim it. I hope the Minister in his winding-up speech will address what the Department for Work and Pensions is doing to promote engagement and increase uptake of this important benefit.
The final area I want to refer to where there is an inherent sense of unfairness is the frozen pensions of overseas pensioners in certain countries. I have recently met people affected by this issue. They have found it hard to survive on a frozen pension and this is especially the case during the coronavirus pandemic. There is a moral case to expand the pensions uplift to overseas pensioners during the pandemic.
I welcome the recent report of the all-party group on frozen British pensions, which is chaired by the right hon. Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale), who spoke earlier in the debate. The report tells of a British citizen, a 96-year-old veteran called Anne Puckridge, who served in all three branches of the armed forces. She moved to Canada in 2001 so that she could be close to her family. Despite all that, and despite her national insurance contributions, she finds herself receiving a state pension of £72.50 a week. Of course, because of the 15-year rule, she is denied proper representation in this place, and I look forward to the Government bringing forward legislation, as they committed to do in their manifesto, to scrap the 15-year rule. She is in a strange and arbitrary situation where, had she moved a bit further south, over the border, into the United States, she would be eligible for a fully uprated state pension, because we have an agreement with the US. Does the Minister see the unfairness in that?
The all-party group has found that the Canadian Government are willing to engage on this issue and have made a formal request to the UK Government about the potential for reciprocal arrangements. I hope the Minister will be in a position to update us on what discussions he and the Pensions Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), have had about this. I hope the Minister will address three key questions on this issue. When do the UK Government plan to respond to the Canadian Government? What is the process moving forward on coming to an agreement? What is that response likely to be? I urge them to reach an agreement. It would clearly be transformative for very many. I look forward to hearing from the Minister on this issue during his winding-up speech.
Oral Answers to Questions
Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Mims Davies
Mr Speaker, would you like to be a 3D animator, a disabled riding school assistant, a camera operator or maybe a trainee fencing coach? These are all kickstart roles that are available. We have made it simpler for employers to get involved with kickstart, cutting the 30 posts minimum threshold so those applying for any number of roles can now apply direct to the DWP. We have also made it easier for sole traders to sign up. We have had a great response, with over 6,500 employers stepping up to offer placements in different fields and sectors, as we have heard, and also to be crucial gateways.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
Will Quince
First, let me say that I appreciate that many people are facing financial disruption due to the pandemic, and the Government have put unprecedented levels of support in place. As the hon. Lady rightly points out, legacy benefits are being increased by 0.5% this year, on top of the 1.7% last year. Legacy benefit claimants can make an application for universal credit, but what I would say is that I encourage them to check on one of the benefit calculators on gov.uk. Once they make an application to universal credit, their entitlement to legacy benefits will cease, so it is very important that they do check first.
Covid-19: Child Maintenance Service
Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) on securing today’s debate, and I was happy to support her application. It is clear from Members’ contributions so far that we all deal with a number of constituents’ cases regarding child maintenance payments. In just a year as an MP, I have dealt with several, so I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss the functioning of the CMS in Parliament today.
It is particularly appropriate to recognise the pressures that have resulted from coronavirus. There are pressures on the hard-working CMS staff, to whom I pay tribute. Like so many of us around the country, they will have had to get used to new ways of working. There are also pressures on parents in receipt of child maintenance, mostly one-parent families, as the economic impact of the pandemic threatens the livelihoods of many. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s excellent “UK Poverty 2020/21” report, published last week, makes that clear. Even before covid, there were huge pressures on one-parent families. They had the highest in-work poverty rate and they are also one of the groups who are most likely to have been especially impacted by covid-19. Single parents are predominantly women and are more likely to work in the sectors hardest hit by covid. They are more reliant on local jobs and are more likely to have struggled with childcare during lockdown. Four in five people in one-parent families are in receipt of income-related benefits.
I mentioned constituency cases and I wanted to highlight one in particular. This constituent contacted me right at the start of my time as an MP, almost exactly a year ago, and her case is shocking. Her former husband had evaded making any financial contribution to help her raise her two sons over an 18-year period and she was owed almost £30,000 of unpaid child maintenance. I am not intending to go into a blow-by-blow account of her dealings with the CMS in the past year. Thankfully, the debt has now been paid, and I am very grateful to Baroness Stedman-Scott for meeting me twice in the autumn to try to resolve the case. However, a few things stood out to me, and to my constituent, throughout this process that I wanted to draw attention to.
The first was the sense of drift. I went to the CMS on several occasions asking what its next steps were and responses were forthcoming to me only after some chasing—my constituent had a similar experience. Months seemed to pass where very little progress was made, and just when we thought that the whole thing had been resolved it turned out that the old liability orders issued against her ex-husband had been lost in the transfer from the Child Support Agency to the CMS. In fairness, I should say that the CMS is replacing a discredited system; that, as I mentioned, coronavirus will have played a part, especially in the spring; and that by the autumn engagement has been good. But for my constituent, these delays have been incredibly frustrating. She told me:
“Any correspondence that I have had with Child Maintenance has been met with the same poor failures in service. Despite all of my efforts there appears to be a distinct lack of accountability to take positive action on my case.”
The second thing that struck me was the bureaucratic hoops that my constituent had to jump through in order for the money to be recovered. Her case had recently been transferred from the old CSA and, as a result, the CMS had in effect to start from scratch on trying to recover the money, even though it had been through the court order process previously. That meant more hoops to jump through, including two occasions when her ex-partner had the ability to launch a review of a decision that had been made by the CMS, which of course he did. All these served to do was to delay and frustrate the recovery of money that was already 18 years overdue. I understand why those safeguards are in place, but it is incredibly frustrating. My constituent felt that the CMS was being more responsive to her ex-partner than to her.
Thirdly, there is the fact that my constituent had to come to me for this to be unblocked. She was getting nowhere on her own. When I escalated the case, I was able to speak to the Minister and to the case manager, and that was a great help, but as is so often the case, as I have learned over the last year, it should not have to be that way. MPs are who people go to when they have exhausted every other option. It should not have to take significant and sustained engagement from me and my casework team to resolve issues. We have to start designing processes that work for people. The tragedy is that my constituent’s children are now adults. They have grown up, and they have missed out on the support they needed at the time they needed it.
Universal Credit and Working Tax Credit
Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts(3 years, 11 months ago)
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Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD) [V]
The Liberal Democrats fully support the £20 uplift to universal credit and making it permanent, and we will vote in favour of the motion accordingly. It is the right thing to do to ensure that our most vulnerable have a safety net that works for them and their dependants. It is the right thing to do to invest in our social security system and the best way to help people to escape from poverty and help stimulate our recovery. And it is the right thing to do to act now and give families certainty, rather than the approach favoured by the Government, which is to leave families in the dark, in the middle of the greatest economic crisis this country has ever seen.
The coronavirus pandemic has transformed how so many people see our welfare system. People who never thought they would interact with the system are now doing so and will need to continue doing so beyond April. We should therefore not be debating whether we should take away the vital £20; we should be debating whether we can go further. Hundreds of thousands of people receive legacy benefits and many of them are unable to transfer to universal credit. They were excluded last year from the Chancellor’s uplift on an entirely arbitrary basis. This group includes many disabled people and their carers. How can we leave them out of the uplift at a time that is difficult for so many? What happened to “no one left behind”? What happened to “whatever it takes”?
The Government have failed to act on this issue, and my North East Fife constituents who claim legacy benefits feel forgotten. That is why we support uplifting legacy benefits and backdating the uplift to April 2020.
It is the same story for carers. Unpaid carers are doing a remarkable and important job in very difficult circumstances. They deserve our support, but there is an historic deficit in the support available to unpaid carers. Carer’s allowance is just £67.25 a week, the lowest benefit of its kind. That is why it is vital that the Government immediately uplift carer’s allowance, too, in line with the uplift to universal credit. Too often, carers have been an afterthought for many politicians. It is time to stand up for them.
As more and more people access universal credit, it is also high time that we looked at the areas where it is failing to deliver. Last year, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published a report looking at universal credit in Glasgow. The report highlighted that many people who access universal credit suffer from mental ill-health, but even more damningly, it said that even among people who did not have a mental health condition, many still suffered anxiety caused by their engagement with universal credit. The reasons include challenges in navigating the online system and a lack of face-to-face support with this, poverty and financial insecurity due to the waiting period for the first payment, the stress of managing budgets between payments, housing, conditionality and the fear of sanctions. The whole point of conditionality is to get people back to work, but right now there is simply little prospect of that. The Government have failed to suspend conditionality during the current lockdown even though they suspended it between March and July last year. On the “digital by default” approach, the majority of claimants access the system on mobile technology, and this has issues for my rural constituency.
In short, there is much work to be done.