What steps she is taking with the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to ensure that vulnerable people have access to welfare benefits through Post Office services.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Guy Opperman) [V]
Ministers in the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy worked closely with the Post Office to ensure that vulnerable customers were able to access benefit payments during lockdown. It remains the case that at least 99% of customers with a bank, building society, credit union or Post Office card account can already access their benefit or pension payments at post office branches or post office ATMs.
Some 1.23 million people do not have a bank account. Given the DWP’s decision that new benefits or state pensions will no longer be collected using the Post Office card account, with the scheme officially closing in November next year, how will the Minister ensure that an estimated 300,000 vulnerable people can still access their benefits?
Guy Opperman
Any customer with a building society or credit union account will be able to continue to access their benefit or pension payments at a post office, even after the closure of the Post Office card account. That includes all bank accounts. There is also the ability to open a basic bank account, for which assistance can be given.
As my hon. Friend knows, alternative payment arrangements are already available to enable housing costs to be paid directly to the landlord. We have listened to feedback, and in May we introduced a new online system for private landlords, so that claimants who struggle with managing their money get the right support promptly. Landlords can now request that a universal credit tenant’s rent is paid directly to them online, rather than by email or post.
When she plans to publish the findings of her Department’s review of how well the welfare system supports terminally ill people, which was announced in July 2019.
I would like to thank all the organisations and charities that supported the consultation, which took longer than we had hoped owing to covid-19. It is clear that there are three themes: the need to change the six-month rule, the need to improve consistency and the need to raise awareness of the support. We are working at pace across Government to bring forward proposals.
I thank my hon. Friend for his answer. As he will know, it is estimated that 125,000 people are now in rent arrears, with rent not being paid to landlords. Many of those people will be in receipt of either universal credit or housing benefit. What steps can he take to ensure that that rent will be paid to landlords, and to prevent spiralling debts that are impossible for people to repay, so that landlords are paid their rent and tenants do not fall into unnecessary rent arrears?
I thank my hon. Friend for that question. He is a passionate and knowledgeable advocate on housing issues, and I always listen carefully to his representations. Alternative payment arrangements such as direct payment to landlords can be requested by the tenant, landlord or work coach, but if there is more that we can do, I am happy to explore it. I regularly meet my counterpart at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to discuss these issues, and I am happy to meet my hon. Friend.
Direct payments to landlords can help vulnerable tenants, but the issue remains that the design flaws in universal credit leave many tenants at risk. We now know that on average, new claimants of universal credit see a net fall of 40% of their income, one in eight tenants have built up arrears and there is a £440 million gap between what landlords believe they are owed and what tenants have paid. What immediate steps can the Minister take to deal with these structural problems, particularly the waiting period for universal credit, so that when the eviction ban is lifted next week, tenants are not at risk of losing their homes?
First, I welcome the hon. Lady to her place on the Front Bench. I am afraid that I have to start by disagreeing. It is wrong to attribute a rise in rent arrears solely to universal credit. We know that many tenants are arriving on universal credit with pre-existing rent arrears, which universal credit actually appears to be helping to clear over time. There is no wait for universal credit; people can get an advance immediately. We recognise that this has been a very difficult time for people on low incomes, and that is why we have injected more than £9.3 billion into our welfare system.
Having supported a number of constituents with motor neurone disease, including a close friend, I have seen some of the challenges that people experience when faced with a terminal diagnosis. Can the Minister reassure me that the Government will not just replace the six-month rule with another arbitrary time limit of, say, 12 months? That would not solve the problem and would create barriers for patients and clinicians when it comes to navigating the special rules for terminal illness.
I pay tribute to the Motor Neurone Disease Association, which has been at the heart of this review. The Secretary of State and I are committed to delivering an improved system that raises awareness of the support, improves consistency and tackles the issue arising from the six-month rule. We are determined that this will be done as quickly as possible.
We are aware of a number of cases in which individuals have been underpaid category BL basic state pension. We corrected our records and reimbursed those affected as soon as the underpayments were identified, and we continue to check and remedy further cases that are identified.
With up to 130,000 women potentially affected, and with many of those women who have already contacted the DWP having been told, wrongly, that they are not entitled to any additional money, will the Minister say what more he is going to do, in the light of the miscommunication that affected thousands of women represented by the Women Against State Pension Inequality campaign, to ensure that the women affected are contacted and given the correct information?