Universal Credit: Highlands — House of Commons, 2017-03-20
Topic: Social Welfare
Andrew Egan Henderson Hendry (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am grateful for the opportunity to debate the universal credit full service roll-out in the highlands. My constituency was a pilot area for the programme before it went to full service, and at the time I was very wary of the prospect. I was told that that would provide an opportunity to iron out all the problems and difficulties to make sure there were none when it came to full service roll-out, but I am afraid that that has not been the case. The problems have not been ironed out, and the situation is causing pain, anxiety and hardship for people in my constituency The aim of the debate is to highlight the problems, to offer solutions to the Minister and, I hope, to get him to accept the need to pause this harmful roll-out. I am sure that the intention behind universal credit was not to cause this type of difficulty, and I am also sure that the Minister is not intent on punishing people by continuing with the programme as it is. I hope that an outcome of the debate will be an understanding by the Minister of the problems that exist and his commitment to take action I was grateful to the Minister for a letter that he wrote to me on 14 March in response to my very detailed letter to him. It is important, in the interests of clarity, that I refer to a number of points in that letter. He wrote: "We are building and developing the universal credit service all the time." By definition, "building and development" means that the process is not completed—it is incomplete. In fact, I contend that at the moment the system is unfit for use. During the period in which we were building and developing a house, we would not allow somebody to live in it. That is tantamount to what is happening to my constituents just now—this is dangerous to their health My constituency office alone has seen more than 100 cases involving issues with universal credit. That is just us—the number does not include the other agencies involved. The number does not cover the countless many, many more people who are not getting any help at all because they do not know where to turn. One constituent of mine who contacted us is called Ian. He waited for six weeks without any money. He had to eat at a food bank and to go for days without electricity, all with a two-year-old living in his house. That is not acceptable, and he did not even get any explanation of why that happened The Minister said in his letter: "I recognise that Inverness Jobcentre Plus covers a large geographical area, and many claimants live some distance from the Jobcentre. Claimants are required to submit their evidence, for example childcare cost receipts, to the Jobcentre before the end of the Assessment Period." Submitting evidence is not that easy, as we found out when another of my constituents, Jane, had to travel from Grantown-on-Spey to Inverness to hand in her childcare vouchers. That is a journey by public transport of an hour and a half each way—a three-hour return trip. It would have been bad enough if, after she had put in her childcare vouchers, that had been the end of it, but the jobcentre lost the data and Jane had to make several more trips. The matter is still not resolved—that is not acceptable. People are not able to upload the information online; they actually have to hand in the vouchers at the jobcentre. Why is it not possible for them to go to another local authority location to take care of the business? There should be far more flexibility in the system The Minister went on to say: "Universal credit is designed as a digital service to be accessed online"— as I have just pointed out, that aspect of the system is not complete—and that if people were having difficulty, they could use an 0345 number. He said further that operators "will offer to call a customer back if concerns are raised over the cost of the call." If we look at the issue of digital by design, we find that there is a big gap. Some 17% of people in the highlands have never used the internet, and there are other big areas of digital exclusion.