Asked by Baroness Sherlock To ask Her Majesty’s Government
what plans they have for the continued rollout of Universal Credit
following the report by the National Audit Office Rolling out
Universal Credit. Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con) My Lords, we
will continue to deliver universal credit as planned, completing
the national rollout for new...Request free trial
Asked by
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To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have for
the continued rollout of Universal Credit following the
report by the National Audit Office Rolling out Universal
Credit.
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(Con)
My Lords, we will continue to deliver universal credit as
planned, completing the national rollout for new claims by
the end of 2018, and from 2019 we will start to move people
from the old benefits system and tax credits to universal
credit. We have taken a test-and-learn approach; we have
learned a lot, and we will continue this. We have made
changes—advance payments, direct payments to landlords, the
two-week housing benefit run-on, removing waiting days,
support for kinship carers and extending transitional
protection—and I have no doubt that the list will get
longer.
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(Lab)
My Lords, Ministers claimed that universal credit would be
fully in place by 2017, that it would be more efficient and
better for claimants and that it would help more into work.
A National Audit Office report says that only 10% of
claimants are on universal credit and it will be 2023
before it is rolled out. Every claim costs £700 to process,
and the NAO found no evidence that universal credit will be
cheaper to run. It says that the DWP has no idea whether
universal credit is reducing fraud and error, and that it
found no evidence for the Minister’s repeated claim that it
will help an extra 200,000 into work. Meanwhile, 40% of
claimants are in financial trouble and, on top of the
planned delay in payment of five or six weeks, 10% of new
claimants waited 11 weeks or more for full payment and 5%
waited for five months. When universal credit hits an area,
food bank use rises and rent arrears go up. My question is
simple: the DWP keeps insisting that all is well but it is
not, so will the Government now urgently review universal
credit and stop pushing people into debt and hardship?
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My Lords, we are trying desperately to put a new system in
place that will make work pay for people. There have been
issues. The National Audit Office report—I have read it and
I urge all noble Lords to do so—has serious concerns about
the programme, I acknowledge that. However, we are serious
about the way we are going to deal with those problems; we
are committed to doing that and we are committed to making
things better. We have a business plan for the rollout. In
any good business you have a business plan with targets,
you measure them, you review them and, when you do not hit
them, you revise your plan. We will approach this in a
business-like but compassionate way to make sure that we do
all to serve people who are influenced by it.
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(LD)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the NAO universal
credit report will serve to heighten the fears of those
means-tested legacy claimants who will be automatically
transferred within a 12-month period on to universal
credit? In the autumn, when the universal credit managed
migration regulations are published, will she personally
ensure that the transitional protection arrangements within
those regulations are adequate for the purpose, will be
automatically available to claimants and will serve in
future to reduce further financial distress?
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My Lords, we do not want people to be distressed in any
way.
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Noble Lords
Oh!
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I know noble Lords do not like it but I can say to them
that out there is a band of work coaches who are doing an
amazing job. One of their jobs is to take people on a
journey, help them, guide them and mitigate stress, and I
have every confidence that they will be doing that. On the
noble Lord’s point about transitional protection, I will
talk to officials to make sure that when I tell him yes, I
am doing it with confidence.
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(Con)
My Lords, I had the pleasure of visiting the main
south-inner-London jobcentre at Kennington Park this morning.
The staff there could not have been more evangelical in their
support for universal credit, and many of those who were
handling legacy claims were only waiting for the time when
those claims moved over to universal credit. They said that
the new system had much more flexibility, that most of the
cases and examples in the NAO report had already been
addressed and that in fact it was already out of date because
the new system was so flexible and adjustable. Can the
Minister assure us that we will continue to roll out the
programme, which has been so well valued by staff in the
jobcentres?
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My response to my noble friend is: you bet we will. I called
a district manager in Jobcentre Plus and asked her to tell me
truthfully how things were going. She said, “It is going much
better. It is agile, it is flexible and once we identify
problems locally with individuals, we are solving them
overnight”. My noble friend should therefore take heart that
this will continue and just get better.
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(Lab)
My Lords, as the Minister said, the DWP makes much of its
test-and-learn approach to UC rollout, yet, instead of trying
to learn, its public response to the damning NAO report was
utterly defensive—although I do welcome the more open
response she has given today. What specific lessons for
action will the department take from the report’s findings,
which were echoed at an APPGUC meeting that I attended just
now by front-line welfare rights workers, who reported a
catalogue of problems faced by the people they are trying to
work with?
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I understand exactly the point that the noble Baroness makes.
There are huge lessons to learn and lots of them. Support
organisations and job coaches identified that people are
being given the wrong information, and are struggling to meet
the requirement to submit a claim because of language
barriers and not having a bank account or identification. All
I can say to the noble Baroness—I would not say it if I did
not believe it—is that the work coaches are doing everything
they can with people in local communities to overcome these
issues. I can see that she is not quite on board with me
yet—but she is smiling. I hope that if she asks this question
in six months’ time, we will have an even better response for
her.
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