Universal Credit
Work and Pensions Committee
Select Committee statement
1.55 pm
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(Birkenhead) (Lab)
I hope I will also leave the House silenced by my report,
and I hope to do so in record speed.
The House passed a motion on 5 December 2017 agreeing that
the Select Committee on Work and Pensions should review the
five project assessment reviews on universal credit. The
Government went beyond that and gave us other papers. All
the papers were almost unreadable, and the fact that they
are now turned from pigs’ ears into a silk purse owes
everything to our Clerk, Adam Mellows-Facer. When Members
read the report, they will understand precisely our debt to
him.
Mr Speaker, I request your help on two fronts. First, this
huge project—huge in Government finance and huge in what it
might do to our constituents—is based on no business case
at all. I am therefore pleased to see my friend the hon.
Member for Salisbury (John Glen), who is now the Economic
Secretary to the Treasury, sitting on the Treasury Bench. I
ask through you, Mr Speaker, that he does not approve
further development of universal credit until the Treasury
has received the business case from his colleague the
Minister for Employment, the hon. Member for Reading West
(Alok Sharma).
Secondly, the project assessment reviews talk about the
industrialisation of claims. This is the roll-out of a
benefit that is, to put it at its kindest, hit and miss.
The problems that our constituents could face are beyond
imagination, and the cost to taxpayers will be enormous. Mr
Speaker, at another time, might I seek your help in getting
time to allow many more Members of the House of Commons to
comment on how universal credit is affecting, or not
affecting, their constituents?
I end by thanking you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to
present the Select Committee’s report to the House.
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The Minister for Employment (Alok Sharma)
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his report. I have
appeared before the Work and Pensions Committee in the past
few days, and a number of the points raised in the report
were raised in that session. I will of course consider the
report, and my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary to the
Treasury has indicated that we will work closely together
on reviewing its content.
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(Birmingham, Erdington)
(Lab)
I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for
Birkenhead (Frank Field) and the Select Committee as a whole
for their excellent work.
Universal credit was designed to smooth the transition into
work and to help lift people out of poverty. Does my right
hon. Friend share my concern that, more than seven years
after universal credit was first announced, and after
repeated resets and delays, it is clear that the Government
still cannot provide evidence for their key claim that people
claiming universal credit will be more likely to find
employment? I mean not just single unemployed people without
children, before cuts to work allowances, who appear in the
statistics that the Government cite, but the full range of
people—single parents, the self-employed, carers and disabled
people—who are now claiming universal credit as the full
service is rolled out.
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I am immensely grateful to my hon. Friend for that question,
because the central part of any business case for universal
credit is that there will be a movement from benefits into
work. We know the Government have no up-to-date data on that,
yet they are pressing ahead. That is why I asked the Economic
Secretary to the Treasury not to sanction further cash for
this programme until the Department for Work and Pensions has
produced a business case.
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(North Ayrshire and
Arran) (SNP)
I thank the right hon. Gentleman, the Chair of the Work and
Pensions Committee, for his work on this report. Given the
key economic assumption underlying universal credit—the claim
that it will deliver much improved employment outcomes for
the vast range of people who claim it—and given that a full
business case for the biggest reform of the welfare state in
50 years has not been made, does he share my concern that
claimants have been pushed into dire financial straits
because universal credit is simply not fit for purpose? We
know the Government say that they are confident about the
progress of universal credit, but does he agree that there
needs to be more openness about this internal review?
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There needs to be some internal sharing of information with
the Treasury, if the Department has it, and the Treasury
should put a stop to any expansion until it gets the business
case. I underscore what the hon. Lady says: our constituents
will be on the rough end of this if it all goes wrong.
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(Strangford) (DUP)
To use your terminology, Mr Speaker, a pithy question: does
the right hon. Gentleman feel that the process so far is
IT-focused, not person-focused, and that that is the problem?
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I would love to say that it was IT-focused, but it is neither
that nor person-focused.
