Debate contribution: Universal Credit: Five-week Wait

Debate contribution by Ms Sian Mulholland on 11 February 2025.

MLA

Ms Sian Mulholland

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

11 February 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Universal Credit: Five-week Wait

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4793421

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I thank the proposer of the motion. We have much common ground. I am really pleased to speak about one of the most pressing issues that face the constituents whom I deal with about universal credit. As the roll-out of universal credit continues, with households in receipt of tax credits needing to be migrated before 5 April, even more households will face the punitive five-week wait. We need to understand what that means in practice. It means people living for five weeks without any income whatever when they are already vulnerable. It means five weeks of impossible choices between heating and eating; five weeks of mounting anxiety over rent arrears; and five weeks that can push families who are just about managing into a spiral of debt from which it is absolutely impossible to escape. The five-week wait is not an accidental flaw but an explicit design feature of the universal credit system that is driving poverty and misery in every corner of Northern Ireland. The evidence of the impact of the wait is overwhelming. While conducting research on the general issues that people faced with universal credit last year, my party and I found that the top issue that came up — overwhelmingly so — was the five-week wait, because of the impact that it has in both the short and long term on people who are dealing with loans, be they official or illegal. That research led to the development of our policy paper, 'No More Time to Wait', the title of which came directly from a claimant's saying, "Never mind the five-week wait; we have no more time to wait". In many cases, verification delays, claim amendments and other issues may mean that the wait is even longer than five weeks. UK data shows that one in eight new universal credit claimants were not paid on time in January 2024. In Northern Ireland, universal credit claimants have highlighted waits of up to six to eight weeks for their first payment. More widely, the Work and Pensions Select Committee heard evidence from people who had waited for more than 11 weeks without receiving anything. The Trussell Trust reported that there was a consistent pattern across these islands that, wherever universal credit had been rolled out, food bank use had increased. In areas where universal credit had been in place for 12 months or more, food banks had seen an average increase in demand of up to 52%. That is not coincidental; it is causal. Parents, who make up over 50% of universal credit claimants in Northern Ireland, face unique challenges during that five-week wait. Some legacy benefits offer a two-week run-on period, whereas child tax credit does not. That leaves many parents without any additional support for their child's needs. Additionally, the fact that parents have to pay childcare fees a month up front often forces them to take on more debt or to give up work entirely if they experience that five-week wait. The Alliance Party has consistently called for reform of universal credit. If it is to be worth anything, the social security system must provide a safety net at the point where people need help, rather than letting them fall, without having any financial support for five weeks. While we support the principles of simplifying the benefits system and making work pay, we cannot stand by while the five-week wait undermines those very objectives. The current system of advance payments is not the solution either: it merely spreads the hardship over a longer period as claimants struggle to repay those advances from their already stretched monthly payments. Since universal credit was introduced in Northern Ireland, over 100,000 households have taken out an advance payment. I find it deeply concerning that many claimants are not made aware of the risks of taking on an advance payment. They are immediate-term fixes that, in most cases, simply kick the financial crisis slightly further down the road. Perhaps most alarming is the growing evidence of vulnerable people turning to illegal moneylenders or loan sharks out of sheer desperation during the five-week wait. Those predatory criminals exploit people's desperation, charging exorbitant interest rates and often using threats and intimidation to collect payments. During the debate on our motion about child poverty, Members heard about two young single mothers who had their windows broken because of their inability to repay debt to illegal moneylenders. It is not just a financial issue; it is a serious social and criminal justice issue. I commend the efforts of the Executive programme for tackling paramilitary activity and organised crime. That comprehensive cross-departmental initiative is led by the Department of Justice under Minister Naomi Long. While that cross-departmental programme addresses all aspects of paramilitary activity and organised crime, it places particular emphasis on combating illegal moneylending, especially in cases of criminals preying on and intimidating society's most vulnerable. In the here and now, the Minister for Communities has the power to take meaningful action and make meaningful change. While the universal credit contingency fund is welcome, it is too limited in its scope, scale and eligibility, as Mr Durkan mentioned. For probably as long as I have been an MLA, we have called for the fund to be urgently renamed and reformed to make it more accessible to those who desperately need it. We have heard repeatedly from claimants who have never even heard of the contingency fund. It is not offered as a standard first response to those who engage in their first universal credit claim and is often hidden online. People do not see it when they go in to their journal. The contingency fund or whatever its new identity is confirmed to be should be the default option. I agree with Mr Durkan on the option of an easy-to-understand leaflet. When you are in the midst of the life admin that comes with a universal credit claim, it can be really difficult to understand the options that are open to you. Something that is easy to understand and accessible to all, particularly the most vulnerable, would be a welcome option. The scale of the fund should be widened to counter the number of claimants getting into debt before their UC journey has even begun. More fundamentally, we urge the introduction of a system of backdating for a claimant's first universal credit assessment period. Using the month before a person's claim for universal credit for their initial assessment period in order to provide a much quicker first payment for some eligible claimants can happen currently, but it is available only in certain circumstances and requires an extraordinary amount of proof. Backdating the first assessment period in that way would give some eligible claimants much faster or, in some cases, immediate access to payment, provided that they had not earned too much in the previous month. It avoids the need for people to take an advance payment and risk falling into that cycle. It is an approach that has been supported by expert stakeholders, including the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Policy in Practice, all of which I met and discussed the solution with while preparing our paper. A balanced approach, as outlined by IPPR, would be to allow claimants to backdate their claim by two weeks. Essentially, they would receive half of their estimated award up front and could then take out a smaller advance payment with more affordable repayment terms spread out over a longer period. That solution would still encourage people to apply for UC promptly but would significantly reduce their initial debt burden and control the costs for the system. While the reform would require temporarily suspending UC conditionality, such as work search requirements for the backdated assessment period, that is a reasonable price to pay to avoid the poverty caused by the five-week wait. It is not an unreasonable request. It is a practical solution that would reduce or eliminate the need for the five-week wait in many cases. It is notable that, whilst it would cost money up front, it would significantly reduce or, in many cases, eliminate the need for advance payments and the use of the likes of the contingency fund, so money would be saved there. Even more important, it would significantly reduce the cost and impact of poverty caused by the current system. The cost of implementing the changes would be far outweighed by the savings in human suffering and in the long-term social and economic costs of poverty and debt. Some might argue that those changes would be too expensive, but the question that I have to ask the Assembly is this: what is the cost of not acting? Similarly, does any Member in the Chamber really believe that a future working group would come up with anything different or an alternative solution? We have had quite a few working groups, and we have had the independent review of welfare mitigations, which was extensive in its recommendations. We are firm believers in evidence-based policymaking. The evidence is clear: the five-week wait is causing immense hardship, pushing people into debt and undermining the objectives of universal credit. We also believe in practical solutions. That is exactly what our amendment proposes. Our constituents deserve better. They deserve a social security system that brings genuine security, treats them with dignity and supports rather than undermines their efforts to improve their circumstances.

1,575 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:57 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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