Universal Credit: Assessment

7. What assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the universal credit assessment system.

The Department has adopted an iterative approach, updating the universal credit system to reflect user needs as they develop. The new Government are committed to reviewing universal credit to make sure that it is doing the job we need it to.

One of my constituents spent six hours fully awake during an operation that went wrong, as doctors battled to save her life. Obviously, this affected her mental health, and she was deemed unfit for work by her GP and by a clinical psychologist. She then went through a half-hour telephone assessment for her universal credit health check, which deemed her fit to work, so she does not get universal credit and it was not backdated to the operation. Does the Minister think that that sounds right? If not, will he review the case?

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for drawing my attention to that. What he has described sounds very odd indeed, and I will be happy to look at the details if he will let me see them. We are absolutely committed to making sure that universal credit does the job that we need it to, including for people in the situation that his constituent has found herself in.

Last week, I was made aware of a constituent who is a carer for his wife, who experienced a stroke in 2016. The constituent is a veteran who lives with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and was awarded carer’s allowance in 2017. Late last year, the DWP began demanding the return of more than £51,000 in alleged universal credit overpayments, and this April, under the previous Government, the DWP began taking it from his state pension without warning. Will the Minister meet me to discuss this case in more detail so that I can help my constituent?

As my hon. Friend will know, there have been some very troubling cases of carer’s allowance overpayment. I am not sure whether carer’s allowance is part of the overpayment he describes, but I will be very happy to meet him to discuss what has gone wrong in this case.