Hansard

I am grateful to the Government for bringing the motion to Parliament and to Labour and the Greens for their amendments, both of which we are happy to support.

As a Liberal, I often lean on the words of William Beveridge when we talk about social security and the welfare state, but I recognise that we have still failed to meet Beveridge’s challenge of addressing the five giant evils of ignorance, idleness, squalor, want and disease over the 60 years since he wrote those words and since my party first embarked on the project of welfare reform.

It might be surprising that my party is so full throated in its backing of the Government motion, as it is true that we were there at the genesis of the universal credit project—we embarked on it in good faith, although I admit that, had we had different partners, things might have been different. However, looking over our shoulder and gazing at what has become of the project, we do so with no small degree of abject horror at the evisceration of the work allowance; at the stubborn incompetence and the inability to address the real, practical problems associated with the roll-out; and at the two-child limit and the rape clause that stems from it, which we blocked continually in our time in office because we believe that the provision of a safety net should never have such a precondition attached to it. I associate myself with Mark Griffin’s remarks and powerful personal testimony on that. We do not believe for a second that normal family life should be denied to people who happen to fall on hard times. That is why we resisted the two-child limit throughout our time in office.

To go back to first principles, for us, it was about the provision of a national minimum by the state, which in turn should be a catalyst for social mobility. The system should be a safety net when needed, as well as a catalyst for social mobility to allow people to haul themselves out of their position. Welfare reform was a necessary undertaking in achieving that end, and many poverty campaigners agreed with that underlying principle. Our support for the motion does not mean that we abandon the principle that a degree of welfare reform was needed. However, the motion is right, and it speaks to the values that we share. We should listen to the casualties who have suffered as a result of the botched roll-out so far, heed their warnings and recognise the tremendous capacity to harm some of the most vulnerable constituents we represent.

In the first days of the roll-out, warning lights started to wink to life across the dashboard of delivery. In the debate on the same topic last month, I quoted Frank Field who, in his capacity as the chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, rightly said that Wonderland visions of welfare reform collapse on contact with real life. That is not about the original intentions of welfare reform; it is about the fact that the centre of gravity has inexorably shifted away from the original vision, as evidenced in the cuts to which my amendment refers.

Throughout our participation, we were clear that the first priority should be to protect and assure a national minimum family income—that should be the alpha and omega—and that, thereafter, the simplification and streamlining of the process would lead to savings through reduced bureaucracy; and, above all, it would incentivise work. However, the Conservatives, governing unencumbered by our influence, have demonstrated that the money-saving aspect of welfare reform has supremacy over all other considerations. We see that in the £3 billion that has been slashed from the work allowance, which undermines family income and routes into work. The theoretical starting point has been corrupted by an ideological shift away from the original intent.

To add insult to injury, the roll-out has been beset by a catalogue of errors, to demonstrable human cost: in the rent arrears that we see mounting for those who are already in direct receipt of the housing benefit component; and in the unintended penalties for the self-employed that we have heard something about.

I associate myself, again, with the remarks of Alison Johnstone, who is right to point out the iniquity of having a system that is not fleet of foot enough to recognise that families are not always united—that, by necessity, we sometimes have to divide payments between claimants, particularly in abusive spousal relationships where finance is still used as a tool of coercive control.

Above all, the plans afford no comfort to families in Edinburgh who, this Christmas, face the roll-out with an understanding of the problems that have befallen those who have gone before them; the delays are legion and they will happen over the festive period, when household incomes and budgets are already stretched to capacity.

In previous debates like this one, I have taken criticism—rightly—about my party’s role in welfare reform when in coalition. However, like in those, I point to what the Conservatives are doing now, unencumbered by our influence. There is the uncertainty about the benefits available to people and their reduction; the erosion of social mobility; and the two-child limit, which, by extension, created the rape clause.

For my party, this was a project of reform, which started with the best of intentions but now has been hopelessly derailed and corrupted by ideological right-wing intent. It needs to be stopped.

I move amendment S5M-14621.4, to insert at end:

“, and regrets that the cuts made to Universal Credit by the UK Conservative administration in 2015 were not restored in its recent Budget.”