Universal Credit Roll-out — House of Commons, 2017-10-18
Topic: Social Welfare
Damian Patrick George Hinds (Conservative, Centre-right): Of course I gave way to the right hon. Gentleman, who is the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee. To respond to his question, of course we do not expect that to happen. What universal credit does is make it more straightforward for people to go into work at all times of the year. Fundamentally, we are not looking at a great acceleration in the roll-out. I will be happy to follow up with him after the debate. We will provide further progress updates in the weeks ahead and I look forward to active dialogue with colleagues Our current system is at once too complex and too uniform. It holds people back because of the perceived risk of ending a benefit claim to go into work, and it is not always obvious how much better off they will be. All too often, once they are in work people are caught by the hours rules in tax credits. I think we have all met people in our surgeries who are stuck on 16 hours a week when they want to be able to get on, progress in their career and provide more for their family. That was illustrated well by my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) and my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall) Those and similar features have been endemic in our system for decades, and I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) and Lord Freud for their insight and determination not merely to regret those things but to reform them; not just to critique the system but to change it. My hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar) put it well when he said that it was not so much that the old system was designed badly, but that as a whole the old system was not designed at all. The new system, universal credit, simplifies by merging six benefits into one and asking people to deal with only one part of Government, not three. The hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) reminded us of the value of simplicity, which is true both for the individual and for the taxpayer. The core design element is that the system looks back over what someone has earned over a month and automatically adjusts payments based on that. It erases the binary distinction between in work and out, and removes the need to flip from one benefit to another, then back again. The consistent taper rate means that people will always know that they will be better off in work and with every extra pound they earn. Universal credit prepares people for work, helps them into work and helps them to get on in work My hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin) reminded us what happens when implementation is rushed, as we saw with working tax credit in the early 2000s. By contrast, the implementation of universal credit is happening over nine years. It is now available in the live service version in every part of the country. In July, we introduced the full service to 29 jobcentres across the country; feedback was positive and system performance improved. There has been much talk about pauses. Well, in August and September, we had one of our pre-planned pauses in the roll-out These pauses ensure that we do have the opportunity to learn lessons, build improvements into the system, and address any issues. From this month, we will be scaling up roll-outs to about 50 jobcentres a month. After another substantial planned pause in the programme’s roll-out, managed migration begins in in June 2019. The whole roll-out will complete in 2022. It is all being done in a careful, co-ordinated way to ensure that improvements can always be made along the way Universal credit is designed to mirror the way that most people in work are paid, which is, these days, monthly. The first payment period is five or six weeks, depending on the individual’s circumstances.