8. 8. Plaid Cymru Debate: Universal Credit

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:17 pm on 25 October 2017.

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Photo of Carl Sargeant Carl Sargeant Labour 6:17, 25 October 2017

I’m grateful, Llywydd. What we don’t recognise here is that, actually, a claimant who fails to turn up to one of the meetings, for whatever reason—illness or, as the Member said earlier on, going to work—actually is sanctioned. Well, maybe we should start those sanctions with the MPs who didn’t turn up in Parliament, the Tory MPs who didn’t vote in the universal credit debate. That’s where we perhaps should start.

I’m grateful for Members’ contributions here, but I was slightly surprised at the contribution made by the leader of Plaid Cymru in terms of the process for introducing the benefit to Wales. When I asked her about the cost of this, the Member was completely unsighted. Actually, this principle of what she’s trying to achieve is—. I don’t disagree with her, but, actually, you haven’t done the homework about the Scottish Government paying £200 million upfront and then £66 million annually just to administer this—nothing to do with the benefit system at all—when actually the UK Government, if it’s the right thing to do, should be doing it in the first place.