Debate contribution: Universal Credit: Five-week Wait

Debate contribution by Mr Gerry Carroll on 11 February 2025.

MLA

Mr Gerry Carroll

Party at the time

People Before Profit Alliance

Date

11 February 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Universal Credit: Five-week Wait

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4793446

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Our social security system is supposed to be a safety net for people who are struggling through hard times. Instead, the design of universal credit actively causes hardship, as we have heard, for thousands of people across the North. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation described universal credit as:

"adding to the turbulence rather than providing an anchor."

Given what we know about universal credit and the five-week wait, "turbulence" is probably an understatement. When people move on to universal credit, they face a minimum wait of five weeks for the first payment. In reality, the wait is usually longer than five weeks. A Trussell Trust report states that the five-week wait is responsible for driving food insecurity. It is one of the key reasons why people use food banks. Housing Rights reports that the five-week wait causes rent arrears. In 2019, the average rent arrears for people on universal credit amounted to £700, compared with £191 for those on housing benefit. I suspect that that average is even higher now, and it shows that universal credit is a completely broken system. Ulster University and the Women's Regional Consortium have serious, well-evidenced concerns that the five-week wait is a driver of illegal lending, including by paramilitaries. All that I would add is this: what about legal lending, including high street moneylenders that charge extortionate rates of interest on money when people are desperate? Not enough is said in the House about those organisations. Advanced payments that are supposed to help people to get through the five-week wait end up causing yet more hardship, as some Members have mentioned. The Women's Regional Consortium found that 42% of women who applied for an advanced payment had difficulty paying it back.

The most common reason for people not applying was fear of getting into debt or further debt. Christians Against Poverty found that the most common form of priority debts owed by their clients in the North are debts owed to the Government. Some 50% of people surveyed by Christians Against Poverty said that they had considered or attempted suicide as an escape from debt. It is harrowing stuff. Tangling people up in debt from the beginning of their UC claim is cruel, and cruelty is the hallmark of the welfare reform system that continues to damage and impoverish working-class communities. Some see that tangling people up in debt is a deliberate strategy.

As the migration to UC continues, more people will face these problems. More will face hardship, food insecurity, exposure to illegal and legal lending and an endless cycle of debt. The universal credit contingency fund, the grant referred to in the motion, already exists. However, not many people know about it, and its uptake is poor, partly due to the name but for other reasons as well. Some 86% of women who took part in the Women's Regional Consortium survey had not even heard of the contingency fund's existence. Because they are not aware of it, some people apply for advance payments instead and are, obviously, in debt to the state with unmanageable repayments. One of the reasons for poor uptake and lack of awareness of the fund is the name, which is completely confusing for people. For that reason, I support the Alliance Party's amendment, which calls for the renaming of the fund. Months ago, the Minister committed to renaming the fund. The Member for North Belfast talked about that. A name change is relatively simple, and there is no cost attached to it, but it appears that it has not been done, which really beggars belief. I implore the Minister to make that name change with speed. I presume that he could do it today. Another simple and low-cost solution, one that seemingly has not been done, is to offer access to the new payments claim as a default option for all new claimants to universal credit. The Alliance Party's amendment also calls for backdating payments to allow for more flexible backdating, meaning that people could get money in their pockets much sooner. That could avoid the need for a five-week wait altogether. I fully support the demands of the Cliff Edge Coalition, which also calls for an urgent renaming of the fund, as well as amendments to the guidance and an increase in the budget to allow more grant payments to be made. The serious issues with the five-week wait are clear, but the solutions are also clear. Many of them are shockingly simple, and I urge the Minister to implement them as soon as possible. I hope that the debate reminds Members how futile and destructive it was to vote for welfare reform.

775 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:58 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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