Universal Credit Roll-out

Simon Clarke Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Anna McMorrin]

No, I will not give way.

The reality is that this accelerated and aggressive roll-out will see an increase in debt, rental arrears, food bank usage, and homelessness—people struggling to make ends meet, with real-life consequences. I know of one family who have had their two children taken into care because they were forced to move into a tent in a park after being evicted when their housing benefit was not paid on time. These children were taken away from their parents not because they were not loved, not because they were not cared for, but because this Government failed them.

It is clear that the current universal credit process is not fit for purpose. It is due to be rolled out in my constituency early in the new year, and I am already getting many people coming to me truly scared about how this is going to affect them. We are seeing an increase in homelessness in Cardiff, especially among young people, with an 18% increase in the past year.

[Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Anna McMorrin]

No, I will not give way.

We are also seeing 475 needless deaths every year across Wales alone because vulnerable people are unable to afford to heat their homes. Homelessness and fuel poverty are set to get worse under this system. We have a Welsh Labour Government tackling it, but their arms are tied behind their backs with this roll-out of universal credit.

I am deeply concerned about the effect that this will have on single-parent families, who make up one in eight households, with significant hardship through delays, errors, fluctuating payments, and payments in arrears. At a time when child poverty in single- parent families is forecast to sharply increase, this system must be fixed. Do not let homeless, evictions, debts and misery pile up. Do not allow destitution to get worse in the 21st century. The Secretary of State says that he wants to test and improve the system; he should listen to the overwhelming evidence and halt this.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

It is the hallmark of a fair welfare system that it includes a strong and effective way of helping people who are out of work to find employment, and, by doing so, allows them to enjoy the dignity, confidence and self-reliance that comes with the ability to provide for themselves and their families. In that regard, we should never take the Government’s achievement since 2010 for granted. There are 3 million more people in work, unemployment in my constituency has halved, and our national unemployment rate is half that of the eurozone.

None of that happened by accident. It happened as a result of the hard work done by companies large and small, and as a result of carefully calibrated Government policy. That progress could—and, I believe, would—be undone in an instant were the shadow Chancellor ever to have an opportunity to unleash his programme of hundreds of billions of pounds of unfunded spending, and nationalisation with Parliament determining “fair compensation” for shareholders, all in the context of a crippling loss of investor confidence and a run on the pound. Despite the progress that we have seen, however, there is further to go, and that is precisely why I support universal credit. Its purpose is to deliver fundamental reform, and to replace a contradictory, and sometimes impossible, set of conflicting benefits with a single simplified payment.

The key question to ask about any policy is “What incentives does it create?” In the case of universal credit, the policy aligns the incentives so that work always pays. In my constituency, too many lives have been blighted for far too long by joblessness. I challenge Opposition Members to go to a ward such as Park End or Hemlington, and then tell me that it is wrong to end the perverse situation that we inherited whereby some people were losing £9 out of every extra £10 that they earned, which left them with virtually no incentive to work.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

What would the hon. Gentleman say to the nearly 7,000 families in his constituency who currently claim tax credit, and who, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, will be £2,500 a year worse off under universal credit?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I am more than happy to allow interventions, but if Members who choose to intervene want to look a colleague in the eye when that colleague drops off the list of speakers, let them do so, because that is what is going to happen.

[Mr Clarke]

In answer to the question, I would tell them that—as I would defend to anybody—this Government are creating jobs and, through their changes to taxes and benefits, making life better.

The fact that I have been elected to serve my constituency shows that people in Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland see through what the Opposition are trying to do. They talk of a pause, but instead they are in effect asking for indefinite delay and the slow death of this policy. That is the reality of what we are seeing here. They talk a good game about supporting the principle, but in reality they oppose it. They should be more open with us and their constituents about that, because the legacy of the last Labour Government was shameful. The real moral outrage was the thousands of people who ended up being trapped on out-of-work benefits for the entire course of the last decade of Labour’s time in office, and it did nothing about it.

We are offering the solutions. We are listening and learning, and making changes—consider the advance payments, consider the alternative payment methods, consider the landlord portal. Ministers are listening. This system is capable of reform. No system is perfect; given the challenge we are confronting here, I do not believe any system could be perfect. The point is whether this system is capable of improvement, and it is. The Government are listening, and we should get behind them, make this work and stop scaring our constituents with stories which will cause many of them to lose sleep tonight, not to look for work.