The Mayor must lobby the Government to make the £20-a-week increase to Universal Credit and Working Tax Credit permanent. This will avoid 100,000 Londoners being plunged into poverty, including 30,000 children.
The London Assembly has today called for the Mayor of London and the Chair of the Assembly to write letters to Rt Hon Rishi Sunak MP, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to make the £20 increase permanent.
Marina Ahmad AM, who proposed the motion said:
“The stark reality is that the £20 weekly uplift can mean the difference between putting enough food on the table and putting the heating on for many families and households in the capital.
“Scrapping this additional payment will hit the pockets of the most vulnerable and underrepresented in our society, the most.
“For many thousands of Londoners, the coming months will already be full of financial uncertainty and we could see a surge in redundancies as the furlough scheme comes to an end at the end of the month.
“With the Government’s job creation programmes, such as Kickstart, still struggling to get off the ground, we clearly need a strong safety net and a permanent extension to the uplift to prevent more people from falling into poverty as the economy slowly recovers”.
The full text of the motion is:
“This Assembly notes that the Government are removing the £20 a week Universal Credit (UC) uplift on 30 September 2021 despite no impact assessment having been carried out. This Assembly also notes research commissioned by City Hall in February 2021 found that the removal of the £20-a-week increase to Universal Credit and Working Tax Credit would put 100,000 more Londoners into poverty, including more than 30,000 children. This Assembly is concerned that this number is likely to be higher now that the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme has been tapered off, ending also on 30 September 2021.
This Assembly notes the disproportionate impact on Londoners that the removal of the UC uplift will have as research found that more than half would be from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds, one in three would be single parents, and one in ten would be disabled.
In light of the Mayor’s evidence, this Assembly is concerned that the removal of the UC uplift could lead to an increase in Londoners living in poverty at a time unemployment is expected to peak. Therefore, this Assembly calls on the Mayor and the Chair of the Assembly to urgently write separate letters to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak MP, to urge him to make the UC uplift permanent, for the UC uplift to be maintained, to extend this uplift to legacy benefits and to remove the benefit cap.”
Notes to editors
- Watch the full webcast.
- The amended motion was agreed by 15 votes for and 8 against.
- Marina Ahmad AM who proposed the original motion, is available for interviews.
- As well as investigating issues that matter to Londoners, the London Assembly acts as a check and a balance on the Mayor.
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