The speech made by Grahame Morris, the Labour MP for Easington, in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons, on the 13 December 2022.
It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I will endeavour to heed your advice about the timings. I thank my good and honourable friend and comrade, the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens), for securing this important debate. I also congratulate him on his assiduous work in questioning Ministers, both in the Chamber and with the use of written questions. I also thank him for sharing the figures that he has discovered—the constituency-based figures—with other Members.
In my remarks, I will first go over the purpose of universal credit and look at the level of sanctions. I also want to stress the human cost of sanctions. Universal credit is the last line of the social security safety net. It is set at a level no one should fall below. By any standard, it is set at a very low level. Let us just remind ourselves that for a single person under 25 the standard allowance—this is a monthly allowance not a weekly allowance—is £265.31. There are additional premiums for disability and so on, but the standard allowance is intended to cover council tax, utilities, food, clothing and other bills. Sometimes the housing element does not meet the full rent, so there is a top-up element for rent as well.
For a couple over 25, the standard allowance is £525.27. In a functioning economy, housing, heat and food should not be scarce commodities. They should be readily available, whether an individual is retired, employed —many people are in low-paid, insecure employment—or in receipt of social security. Universal credit should alleviate poverty. Instead, sanctions are entrenching hardship and destitution. It is a terrible shame that the Government do not put the same effort into hunting down tax evasion and apply sanctions against the very wealthy individuals who evade payment of many millions of pounds in the tax that they owe.
The level of sanctions is excessive. I thank again the hon. Member for Glasgow South West for highlighting the figures and sharing them. He mentioned that throughout the whole country the figures are as follows: in June 2020, there was over £34 million in sanctions; in July 2022, a little under £35 million; and in August 2022, £36,397,000—£36.5 million basically. If we total those together, sanctions at that level is almost half a billion pounds a year.
Where is the one-nation, caring and compassionate Conservative party, if the Government force people into poverty and destitution, particularly those who are vulnerable? My right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) quoted the figures for his constituency, but the figures are worse for my constituency of Easington. Deductions amount to roughly £75,000 a month from people who are in the direst hardship before the deductions for advance payments, for bedroom tax, or overpayments caused by administrative error or neglect.
The hon. Member for Glasgow South West made a great point about digital exclusion and the number of people who simply cannot access the system because they do not have even a basic smartphone or the wi-fi connectivity to be able to do that. The consequence is rising poverty, growing queues at food banks, and now the need for the voluntary and community sector to create warm spaces to accommodate people and at least give them a hot drink and some shelter, particularly in this terrible cold weather that we are experiencing. Sanctions harm society and can have tragic consequences.
I want to quote a BBC article dated 10 May 2021. It is a moving piece entitled “Deaths of people on benefits prompt inquiry call”. The article states:
“Cases where people claiming benefits died or came to serious harm have led to more than 150 government reviews since 2012”.
It highlights cases, including this one:
“Ms Day, 27, who had been diagnosed with emotionally unstable personality disorder, had previously said her benefit claim left her feeling ‘inhuman’, her sister told the BBC.”
After Ms Day’s death, the inquest concluded that the authorities made 28 errors in managing her case.
In another case:
“Errol Graham starved to death in 2018 while seriously mentally ill. His benefits were stopped when he failed to attend a work capability assessment and did not respond to calls, letters or home visits from the DWP. When his body was found, Mr Graham weighed four-and-a-half stone (30kg) and his family said he had used pliers to pull out his teeth.”
We need to end the sanctions culture. It harms society, leaves the poorest in destitution and places the sick, the ill and the disabled in extreme circumstances in which they can often see no way out. The Minister can act by introducing a moratorium on sanctions. Sanctions should not be used routinely; they should instead be reserved as a last resort for the most extreme circumstances and cases. This is a matter of life and death. The Minister has an immense responsibility to safeguard those in need and the vulnerable. I urge him not to fail them as his predecessors have failed them, and to end the sanctions culture we have today.
