Free School Meals/Pupil Premium: Eligibility
Debate between Alex Burghart and Stephen Timms(6 years, 2 months ago)
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Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I, too, want to refer to the work incentive, because improving it was supposed to be the fundamental advantage of universal credit. That was set out fully and ably by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) from 2010 onwards. For example, the document “21st Century Welfare”, which was published in July 2010, states in chapter 2 that
“someone at the National Minimum Wage would be less than £7 per week better off if they worked 16 extra hours…A system that produces this result cannot be right.”
We all agreed with the right hon. Gentleman about that, yet the universal credit system, which is supposed to remove all these problems, will introduce a benefit trap far worse than anything in the legacy system. There is nothing in the legacy system under which someone earning a few hours of extra work will end up hundreds of pounds worse off because they have lost their free school meals.
