Meeting of the Parliament 23 April 2019
I am about to come on to that. When Michelle Ballantyne was speaking, the committee convener made an intervention about how vulnerable people would be affected by universal credit. She claimed that we are not yet clear about who will be worse off, or not. However, we have figures for that, and I would have expected Michelle Ballantyne to know what the figures are. Lone parents and disabled households without housing costs will be £1,940 and £1,220 worse off every single year. I would have expected Tory members to know about the impact that universal credit is having and will continue to have on vulnerable working people.
In my Central Scotland region, 28,000 people have moved on to universal credit since the roll-out started in October 2017. They are suffering rent arrears, which have quadrupled; they are having to pay back £11 million in advances at a rate of 40 per cent; and they are facing a brutal conditionality system that forces them to find more work.
Constituents who have been in touch with my office recently have talked about just how aggressive and pernicious UC really is. One constituent saw their tax rebate—for income that they earned last year, on which they were unfairly taxed—swallowed up as “income”, and their UC payments were cut. Another constituent had their UC payments cut and money clawed back because the DWP had failed to take account of their student loan payments. The person had informed their work coach and put the information on their log—as they are advised to do—six months ago.
Our report looks specifically at the social security system, but it is hard to ignore the fact that Brexit—which is another mess of the Tories’ making—will have a devastating effect on those on low incomes. We might have stepped back from a devastating no-deal Brexit, but the risks of price rises, falls in wages, lower employment and lower tax revenues will do nothing to stop pushing working people below the breadline. When we took evidence in the autumn, universal credit was one of the few things that cut through the Brexit fog.
The report rightly recognises that the budget made much-needed changes, but the 2015 cuts must be reversed in full. The Tory committee members agreed to that, but littered throughout the report is a trail of dissent and opposition that shows how unwilling the Tories are to accept the impact that universal credit is having on people across the country.
An important conclusion in the report is that social security is becoming a shared responsibility. It is almost a year to the day since the Parliament agreed to pass the Social Security (Scotland) Bill.
I have told members before that I was one of four children. My parents worked hard—my father as a welder and my mother as a bank clerk—to support the family that they chose to have. My dad was diagnosed with a serious heart condition at the age of 37 and could not carry on doing the work that he had done for 20 years. Who plans for such a situation when they start a family? Who plans for redundancy, career-ending illness or even death at 47? Where is the support network? Where is the state support that children depend on day in, day out when circumstances change beyond anyone’s comprehension?
We accept that we cannot mitigate the effect of every cut, but the refusal to act on the two-child limit and the rape clause is shameful. What is done can be called mitigation, but people must be assured that Holyrood will act and is better than the callous Tory Government. To be frank, Scots do not care what colour of Government provides the support.
The report is a starting point, but we now need change. Where we can, MSPs must act, too.
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