Amid growing calls from across the political spectrum for a pause
in the Universal Credit rollout as evidence of problems
continues to mount, the Work and Pensions Committee will take
evidence from Secretary of State on Wednesday morning.
The DWP has failed to respond to the Committee’s call for written
evidence, or any of the four letters requesting statistics and
clarifications of policy sent to the Secretary of State over the
past six weeks. The Department was asked to respond to the
questions by last Thursday, so that the Committee could go into
the session with a full understanding of the current picture of
the rollout and the protections in place for vulnerable
claimants. Despite all this, the DWP has failed to provide any
new information to the inquiry.
There are very few statistics in the public domain on Universal
Credit. DWP itself has never published data on the length
of waits over the statutory, in-built 6 weeks: news of delays of
10, 12 week or longer in receiving payments was heard in evidence
to the Committee. In seeking to get an up-to-date impression of
the rollout and its effects at local level, the Committee has
written to the 54 MPs whose constituents will be subject to
Universal Credit full service for the first time in October,
asking them to report back information.
103 organisations and individuals managed to send written
evidence to the Committee by last Friday’s deadline. A further 52
individuals have contributed to the online forum. That is in
addition to the 180 organisations and individuals who contributed
written evidence to the inquiry before the election was
called.
Rt Hon MP, Chair of the Committee,
said: “For claimants not to receive money from Universal Credit
is usually a disaster. For the Secretary of State not to answer
letters shows either a huge discourtesy to Parliament or a sign
that the Government knows the game is nearly up in trying to
present this mega-reform as a success.
“I don’t know if the DWP is deliberately concealing information
about Universal Credit or is simply incompetent. Either way, it
is not good enough. This has obvious echoes in the far greater
failure of not paying hungry claimants on time.
“One letter simply asked if the conference announcement on
advance payments was, despite appearances, simply a restatement
of existing policy. You’d think they could at least answer that
one. We expect another announcement on Wednesday about helping
councils left short by Universal Credit’s failure to account for
the cost of emergency temporary accommodation,
by “rolling-in” some claimants back onto Housing Benefit.
This is overdue, but does nothing to address the fundamental
problem of people being left for weeks without anything to live
on.
“Given everything we have heard, I was surprised that opted to proceed with the
accelerated rollout. I strongly suspect his decision, together
with the failure to tell us anything, reflects a culture at the
DWP of those most invested in Universal Credit not telling
anyone, including their Ministers, bad news. The overwhelming
picture we are getting is that Universal Credit as currently
configured is very bad news. We have heard nothing, to the
contrary or otherwise, from those running it.”
The Committee will be putting some of the many individual cases
and scenarios it has heard to the Minister on Wednesday morning.
Later in the day in the House of Commons there will be an
Opposition Day debate on Universal Credit. /ENDS
Notes:
18 October
2017 9:30 am
Oral Evidence Session
Universal Credit rollout
View details
Witness(es)
Rt Hon MP, Secretary of State for Work
and Pensions, Department for Work and Pensions
Neil Couling CBE, Director, Universal Credit Programme,
Department for Work and Pensions – tbc
