I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the Universal Credit and Jobseeker’s Allowance (Work Search and Work Availability Requirements – limitations) (Amendment) Regulations 2022, (S.I. 2022, No. 108).
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Elliott.
The Opposition do not support the statutory instrument. I will say briefly why. This is a simple piece of legislation, but its effect could be widespread and damaging. To summarise, the explanatory memorandum puts it clearly:
“Existing regulations give discretion to allow jobseekers to look for work in their chosen field for up to 13 weeks. This is known as the ‘permitted period’…These Regulations will reduce the maximum permitted period to 4 weeks.”
Before I get to the substance of my argument, I want to make a procedural point, in that the regulations are being introduced under an urgency provision. The Government claim that they are urgent, but it is hard to understand why, when every other aspect of the Government argument about the pandemic is that we have moved beyond that period, yet here the Government are using urgency provisions to make substantial changes to social security arrangements.
The memorandum also explains that the Department is looking to undertake the Social Security Advisory Committee engagement retrospectively. What is the point of asking for advice on something that it has already done? Surely the Government’s credibility turns on asking for advice and being seen to take it seriously, rather than retrospectively. That is why we will vote against the motion on whether we have discussed the regulations. It is evident that the process is being rushed, and does not follow the standard procedure for scrutiny of Government changes to social security.
I do not want to detain everyone for long. I will make three simple objections to what the Government are doing. As I understand it, the Government’s argument is that the best way to help people’s income is to get them into any job in the hope that that might get them a better job at some point down the line. If we were facing a massive unemployment crisis, as this country has faced before—due to an external or internal shock, a huge number of people are out of work—the evidence shows that it is better for people to be in a job, because long periods of unemployment cost workers in the long term. However, that is not the situation that we face. The Government know that and anyone who takes a cursory look at the data knows that. What we have is a vacancy crisis.