Universal Credit and Working Tax Credits — House of Commons, 2021-09-15
Topic: Labor
Ben Spencer (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a pleasure to be able to speak on this very important subject I wish to put on record my thanks to the people who work for the Department for Work and Pensions, particularly those in the Weybridge jobcentre whom I visited just a couple of months ago. The passion of the people who work there, supporting people and helping them back into work, is absolutely incredible. Before I got into politics, my view of jobcentres was as quite negative places, but that jobcentre in Weybridge is a place of real hope and opportunity, and its staff do incredible work The pandemic has thrown us incredible challenges. Sadly, many of my constituents lost their jobs, and people faced increased costs. They found it difficult to reduce their cost of living in response to changing circumstances because of the restrictions that were put in place, and the job market completely went under. On that basis, it was entirely right for us to impose a temporary uplift to universal credit to help people through that difficult time. Now we are in a different situation. The job market is opening up and the difficulties in reducing costs are fewer, but we do have ongoing increased costs of living, and I will come back to that later in my speech We are also in a very different fiscal situation. We have borrowed a lot to pay for the pandemic. That has damaged our economy and we still have an ongoing deficit. It is important to remember that most of the money that we are spending now is borrowed, and it will not be us or our constituents who pay it back; it will be their children and our children who are paying that back in years to come. That is a big problem, of which we need to be mindful We have limited resources, and it is right when we are using them that our first priority should be throwing everything we can into supporting people back into work. I support the Department in seeing that as its priority, with provisions such as the plan for jobs and the kickstart scheme. I support the work we are doing, as we throw everything into helping people back into work, helping people to progress in work and supporting people with disabilities into work to ensure that everyone has the opportunity of a job However, as many Members have mentioned, there are a lot of people in work who are still struggling. Of course, I have sympathy for the calls saying that one option is to continue the universal credit uplift, but before taking such a big decision, I think it is worth reflecting on the issue and ensuring that we get the most bang for our buck regarding the money that we spend on this precious resource. We should look a bit at what is going on for people in these difficult situations—those who are really struggling and who are currently in work As many Members have already mentioned, the Work and Pensions Committee, of which I am a member, last week took evidence from several people on the challenges that they are facing. It is important to ask people about these issues to find out what is going on. What was really striking to me was that every witness who spoke to us was a single parent. When we started to delve into the challenge they faced, the cost of living came up big time, of course, but they particularly mentioned the cost of childcare and difficulties getting childcare. One witness, who was very impressive, explained that she pays £300 for childcare every month, which really blows out of the water the extra £100 she gets in universal credit uplift. That is in addition to all the other costs of living, such as the largely unaffordable rented housing that we have in this country.