Social Security — House of Commons, 2021-02-09
Topic: Social Welfare
Wendy Anne Chamberlain (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): It is hard to believe that more than four months have passed since we considered the Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Bill last autumn, and I welcome the annual process used to ensure that social security benefits and pensions are uprated. However, like others who have spoken in the debate, I must put on record my disappointment at the decisions taken. We are just weeks away from the new financial year, and it might seem hard to believe for some Members, but for millions of people across the country, that represents a terrifying reality There is still total uncertainty about what will happen to the universal credit uplift of £20 a week. Under the statutory instrument, the Government plan to take away £1,000 a year from the least well-off families in Britain. This is not scaremongering. The uplift may have been for one year, but people’s situations are arguably more precarious than they were a year ago, so this is quite simply the wrong thing to do. It is the wrong thing to do morally, and it is the wrong thing to do economically, because this money will not be stored away; it will be spent and reinvested back into the economy The support that the uplift represents is vital, yet the Government have spurned opportunity after opportunity to make it permanent or to at least extend it. They could have done it during the Secretary of State’s publication of uprating totals back in November, and they could have done it when the latest national lockdown was announced at the beginning of the year, but they did not. Then the Government abstained on the Opposition day motion in the name of the Leader of the Opposition, which puts us in a bizarre situation where Parliament has approved a motion calling for the uplift to be made permanent, yet the Government plan to do nothing about it. The idea of non-binding motions may be familiar to those of us who occupy this place, but in terms of communicating the will of the House to our constituents, I find that an abdication of responsibility from those on the Government Benches. During all that time, millions of families have had to live with the uncertainty of not knowing what their income will be come April. The Government need to provide support, but they also need to provide certainty I welcome the report published last week by the all-party parliamentary group on poverty, chaired by the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), calling for the uplift to be made permanent. As the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) said, support for that exists across the House. That is what the Government have to do. Otherwise, they will be letting people down at exactly the time when our safety net is meant to support them The report also calls for an uplift in legacy benefits, which I wholeheartedly echo and which has been recommended by the Work and Pensions Committee, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and many others. I do not think we in this place have given enough attention to the issue of people in receipt of legacy benefits. Many of my constituents who receive these benefits were very disappointed to see that they had been excluded from any uplift. It is not right. If we accept that universal credit claimants should receive an uplift, there is no reason why that should not have been extended. Instead, the only uplifts offered for legacy benefits are the inflationary ones detailed in the statutory instrument today. That means, for example, that someone who receives ESA and is in a work-related activity group will receive 35p per week extra, and someone who receives carer’s allowance will see a 30p per week increase. Many of my constituents regard these increases, at a time of such hardship for many of them, to be derisory. I urge the Government to consider uplifting legacy benefits. It is a question of fairness. The Minister, in his opening remarks, suggested that Opposition scaremongering is responsible for those on legacy benefits being deterred from making UC claims, but surely at such an uncertain time it is understandable that people choose to stick with what they know and what they have.