‘Denuded’ Work and Pensions committee sheds little light on Universal Credit

The Work and Pensions Select Committee was much denuded this evening, chair Anne Begg told the guests: its membership had either been promoted in the reshuffle or had personal crises to attend to. In the end Begg was joined by Andrew Bingham, Stephen Lloyd, Teresa Pearce and Glenda Jackson to interrogate Iain Duncan Smith and Lord Freud about the implementation of universal credit. Their questions seemed rather denuded, too: not of detail, for these MPs do truly know their stuff when it comes to welfare reform, but of a sense of the bigger picture.

During the hearing, which lasted nearly three hours, the Work and Pensions Secretary and his Welfare Reform Minister explained how they planned to encourage claimants to manage their claims online. Duncan Smith suggested this would bring claimants into the 21st century, explaining that ‘what we’re not doing is treating them all as infants’. He dismissed claims that monthly payments of the new benefit would push families into poverty, arguing that most claimants wanted monthly payments and that the days of weekly wage packets at the factory gate had gone.