The five-week wait for a first Universal Credit payment is utterly disfunctional
– TORY MP HEIDI ALLEN
TWO minutes from Morecambe Bay’s seafront, 60 locals are packed into a church community centre.
Independent MP Frank Field, formerly of Labour, and Conservative Heidi Allen have come to a foodbank to listen to them. Their visit to the Lancashire town was triggered by a surge in demand at the Trussell Trust site, which fed 674 last month – up 27% on January 2018.
Volunteers say Universal Credit is largely behind the rise. “The evidence speaks for itself,” said manager Annette Smith. “It’s been devastating, harrowing listening to the stories.”
Yet in November, local Tory MP David Morris claimed: “In Morecambe, we have had Universal Credit for the past two years. It is a success.”
Heidi explains her visit by saying: “I want to do this because it seems Government thinks UC is this amazing system and it all fits and it’s all fine but a lot of us know that it’s not like that.”
The Commons Work and Pensions Committee is probing poverty and Morecambe is the latest stop on its tour, also taking in Newcastle, Leicester and London.
The MPs’ report will recommend overhauling
UC. Frank vows: “The two policies we will be pressing most on will be to scrap the freeze on benefits and to, if possible, make UC work.” Heidi adds: “The Universal Credit five-week wait for the first payment is utterly dysfunctional.”
A volunteer who normally works with the homeless in Morecambe says: “More and more with Universal Credit we were having families with their kids and we were helping them, feeding them and also we took clothes and helped with toiletries.” She said she refers “an awful lot of people” on UC to foodbanks. Karen Wheeler, 51, has a masters degree and a teaching qualification, and once briefed ministers in Whitehall. In 1999 she was married, had an “excellent job” and was happy – until her diagnosis with a neurological condition. She was off work then lost her
mother and split from her husband. The housing crisis hit and the family home sold for less than they hoped.
Her mental health faltered while daughter Emily, 17, also fell ill and Karen had to leave her job to look after her.
She used up her savings and began self-harming, carving the words “failure” into her skin. She thought of suicide. “I felt my daughter would be better off without me around,” admits Karen. “The debts were racking up at an impossible rate and I was served an eviction notice.
“Poverty can happen to anyone, in any position, at any time. All it requires is a chain of unfortunate events.”
Emily, doing A-levels, says she and her mum were often left with £2 a week after bills. When her school held a non-uniform day for a kids’ charity, her mates each gave a quid but Emily could not afford to. “I could tell they thought I was selfish by not wanting to part with a pound for a disadvantaged child,” she says. “No one knew that might have been me.”
Daniel Burba, 25, reveals how at 13 he was lured into selling drugs on his estate. “You’re so afraid of what will happen to you if you don’t,” he says. Daniel also rails against the box-ticking culture he feels riddles the system, adding: “Treat me as you would want to be treated; see me as a person, not a number.”
And he accuses the Government of fuelling a race where the “rich get richer and the poor get poorer”.
Local headmistress Siobhan Collingwood says: “These are not extreme examples – this is the reality of daily life for too many in our community.”