The Secretary of State’S Handling of Universal Credit

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 1:48 pm on 11 July 2018.

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Photo of Esther McVey Esther McVey The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions 1:48, 11 July 2018

Hang on, everybody.

The comments that are being made today are the comments that we had to check for accuracy, which were sent out to scare people just before Christmas. An email from the Labour party on 6 December said that

“40,000 children will wake up in poverty on Christmas Day”.

It also sent out a video—checking the accuracy here—saying that

“millions of people are faced with poverty, debt and eviction as a result of Universal Credit” and asking us to pause and fix universal credit. This went to the UK Statistics Authority, which said:

“It is clearly important that statements by a political party should be fully supported by statistics and sources…We do not believe” they were. As I am in a generous mood today, will Opposition Front Benchers take this opportunity to apologise? They have not so far. It took me two days to apologise. Would they like to apologise?