Department for Work and Pensions

I wish in a way that, at the time, I had been able to defend the courage of my good friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman). He is right that employment is up, but for the parts of the country that my right hon. Friend the Chair of Select Committee and I have seen on our tour—I hate that word because it sounds like a holiday—of food banks, what we saw were people who were utterly on the edge. With the greatest respect, universal credit is not built to deal with people who have no financial resilience at all. They are the people that we are talking about, and these cuts have absolutely cut them to the bone.