Debate contribution: Universal Credit: Five-week Wait

Debate contribution by Ms Kellie Armstrong on 11 February 2025.

MLA

Ms Kellie Armstrong

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 4793464

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you very much, Deputy Speaker. I thank Mark Durkan and the SDLP for tabling the motion. I also thank my colleague Sian Mulholland for proposing our amendment, the DUP for its amendment and the Minister for his comments today. My colleague Sian talked about what universal credit is and about the five-week wait. Others mentioned the run-on. Although some legacy benefits have a run-on into the five-week assessment period, carer's allowance, disability living allowance (DLA) and the personal independence payment (PIP) are some, along with child tax credits, that do not. That impacts on a number of families and causes them a loss of income. As my colleague Sian said, the Alliance Party has a policy paper called 'No More Time to Wait'. It reflects exactly what we have heard from individuals across Northern Ireland. I can understand why the DUP amendment mentions a working group, but we have working groups coming out of our ears. We need to be doing something. We do not have any more time to waste. As others said, the Trussell Trust has stated that, as universal credit has been rolled out, the use of food banks has increased. Social supermarkets, which one of our DUP colleagues mentioned, are great. I am, however, disappointed that, not all the time but a lot of the time, the underlying cause of the use of food banks and social supermarkets is paramilitary lending.

That paramilitary lending is not recorded anywhere, because the services try to protect the person. They do that, because if the paramilitaries find out that that person is going to the social supermarket and telling it about their paramilitary lending, they will get an increased percentage added to their loan.

Advance loans are not the answer for people who are already in debt. People who have been moved on to universal credit as part of the planned migration have not had time to save up and prepare for that period without money. I have to say a huge thanks to the departmental officials, including Paddy Rooney, who came along to provide an informal update to the Communities Committee on the work that they are doing to try to mitigate those losses — they are doing the best that they can — because we all recognise that that five-week wait is causing harm. Those mitigations, while welcome, need to be added to. That is why we have called for the universal credit contingency fund to be changed to the new claims payment. My colleague Sian Mulholland talked about backdating, as supported by the IPPR. Two weeks' payment as a universal credit new claims payment, for instance, could be a way of mitigating that loss so that people, including children and families, are not living for those periods with no money. The contingency fund, rather than the loan, should be offered as a matter of course. I appreciate that the Minister has said that a lot of promotion of the universal credit contingency fund is happening, but it is still not working. There are still people coming to our offices and many of the advice centres saying that they were offered the loan first, and that they did not know about the contingency fund — that non-repayable fund that they could have accessed.

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

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

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.

Disagree with this assessment?

Classifications can be challenged. A person reads every challenge, and any change is recorded publicly above with its reason.

Challenge this classification