Universal Credit Bill

Baroness Shawcross-Wolfson Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & 3rd reading
Tuesday 22nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Shawcross-Wolfson (Con) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, it is a huge honour to make my maiden speech here in your Lordships’ House, and I am grateful for all the warm wishes that I have received. I want to thank those who have helped me since my introduction, first and foremost Mr Ingram and the doorkeepers, who have been unfailingly kind, along with Black Rod and the rest of the staff of the House. I must also thank my supporters, the noble Lord, Lord Butler, and my noble friend Lady Jenkin. In different ways, they have both inspired me across the years.

Like all of us, I am the product of my family, and, like many of us, my family's story is one of immigration and integration. My father’s father, Hartley Shawcross, came from Lancashire stock. He was a barrister, an MP, Clement Attlee’s Attorney-General and Britain’s chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. In 1959, he was among the first life Peers to be introduced into your Lordships’ House and sat as a Cross-Bencher. My mother’s mother, Leah Katzeff, was born in Lithuania, but her parents, fearing persecution and poverty, emigrated to South Africa when she was an infant. The family who stayed behind were all murdered in Lithuania as the Nazis advanced in the summer of 1941.

My grandparents led vastly different lives. My childhood memories are of clotted cream in Cornwall and chopped liver in Camden. But they shared a love of this country, a commitment to liberty, and a belief in the rule of law. My English grandfather helped to try those ultimately responsible for the murder of my Lithuanian grandmother’s family. My Lithuanian grandmother spent the second half of her life here in England campaigning for human rights and ending her career as director of Justice, a charity my grandfather co-founded decades earlier. Their stories, and the stories of my parents, shaped my sense of purpose.

After starting a career in management consultancy, a desire to be more useful and, I confess, youthful optimism, led me into politics. My grandfather and father both started on the left of the political spectrum and moved right over their careers. I thought I would save myself the trouble and start squarely in the centre-right. After nearly 20 years in Westminster, I have worked with wonderful politicians and civil servants: too many to thank individually. I particularly thank George Osborne, who took a chance in 2007 that a spreadsheet-literate consultant might be useful on his team. George was a wonderful boss—such a good boss, in fact, that he introduced me to my husband, my noble kinsman Lord Wolfson of Aspley Guise. The career I began with George ultimately led me to No. 10 Downing Street, where I ran the Policy Unit for Rishi Sunak. It was the honour of a lifetime. Rishi believes in public service to his core, and I hope to follow the example he sets in public life: unstinting hard work, steadfast integrity and personal kindness.

If the first duty of government is defence of the realm and the second the rule of law, the third, I would argue, is to help the vulnerable. I was fortunate to spend time at the Department for Work and Pensions, most recently as a non-executive director, when the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, was Secretary of State. As our population ages and demand grows, this country has to grapple with how to run an effective, fair and sustainable healthcare and welfare system. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate on the universal credit Bill, and I offer two reflections today.

First, we must always live within our means, so every spending decision is a trade-off. Here, I must acknowledge the influence of the noble Lord, Lord Macpherson, and six years working at HM Treasury. Borrowing more is not a solution. I agree totally with the Chancellor when she said that there is nothing progressive about a Government who simply spend more and more each year on debt interest. Instead, we must choose. Reasonable people can and do disagree on what those choices should be, as we can see here today. This debate makes for better decisions, but trade- offs are unavoidable, and we cannot pretend otherwise.

Secondly, policy is always about people. The numbers must add up, but every pound taxed, every pound spent, every incentive created, every disincentive introduced, makes a difference to people’s lives. The Government’s job—and I really know from first-hand how difficult this is—is to see it all: the big-picture cost, the systemic incentives and the individuals at the heart of it.

Twenty years in politics—or perhaps it is just middle age—have tempered my youthful optimism but not my belief in progress. I know that there will be difficult decisions ahead, but I am greatly encouraged by the wisdom, determination and civility that I have witnessed in this Chamber. I will do my best to follow the example that you have all set, and I look forward to making whatever contribution I can to your Lordships’ House.