Amber Rudd admits Universal Credit is in trouble

Amber Rudd left the Home Office over the Windrush scandal and has joined the Work and Pensions department just as its flagship benefits reform is under fire from all angles. The new Secretary of State spent most of her first session at the dispatch box this afternoon answering questions on Universal Credit – and she had arrived determined to strike a rather different tone from her predecessor.

Esther McVey, who resigned from the role last week, had garnered a reputation for being rather hardline when dealing with criticisms of the benefit roll-out, while also managing to give far more away about some of its problems than Number 10 would have liked. Rudd, meanwhile, lost her job earlier this year partly because she had decided to follow Theresa May’s footsteps rather too faithfully in creating a ‘hostile environment’ for immigration. Now she joins at a time of great instability, both for the Prime Minister and Universal Credit, and therefore the new Cabinet minister needed to show that she wasn’t just going to stick her fingers in her ears and pretend that everything was alright.

When Rudd was appointed, her critics pointed out that she had been forced to resign after appearing not to know what had been going on in her own department when the Windrush revelations began to surface. Wouldn’t this make her a terrible person to try to steer Universal Credit? This isn’t a particularly good comparison, though, because the Home Office is a notoriously difficult ministry for anyone to stay in control of all the time, and the Windrush crisis crept up on it. Conversely, Universal Credit has been the clear priority of the DWP for years now. It would be quite impressive if a minister wasn’t aware of the problems with this benefit.

Rudd was in a defensive mood as the Labour frontbench quoted from a UN report which described a ‘dismissive’ attitude from ministers towards criticisms of the benefits. Rudd accused the author of this report of using overtly political language which detracted from some of his points about the welfare system. Later in the session, though, she went into more detail about how she plans to run the department. Opening the topical section of the questions, the minister told the Chamber:

‘Three days in and I know that the Work and Pensions department is a force for good, helps people in need, helps people into work, out of poverty and gives support at the end of their lives. This is what we want for our families, our friends, our neighbours, this is the country, this is who we are. It is good that employment has risen to record levels of 75 per cent as stated just recently.

‘But I know that there are problems with Universal Credit, despite its good intentions. I’ve seen them for myself, I will be listening and learning from the expert groups in this area who do such good work. I know it can be better. I will make it my role to ensure that we deliver that through our discussions within the DWP and through discussions with Treasury. We will have a fair, compassionate and efficient benefits system.’

She and her departmental colleagues repeated this points about the government listening to concerns and working to improve the benefit as the topical questions continued. Rudd has no choice, really. It wasn’t just Labour MPs who were raising concerns about UC: even loyal backbench Conservative MPs were. Chris Philp, who usually asks anodyne questions of ministers that involve getting them to agree that the government is doing a good job, asked for improvements to the benefit, though he couched his question with as many descriptions of the problems as ‘small’ and ‘technical’ as he could get away with before being jeered at by the Opposition. The Tory whips continue to worry a great deal about UC, as MPs continually raise the problems with its design with them. Rudd isn’t a government troublemaker, but neither is she lacking in ambition. To survive at DWP, she has to give the impression that she is going to stop this flagship from becoming a public policy scandal, and that involves admitting that the welfare system isn’t where it should be, as she did today.