The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Thérèse Coffey, has announced that the current £20 per week uplift to Universal Credit payments will be “phased out” in October.
This will do nothing to ease the financial uncertainty of the hundreds of thousands of Londoners who are currently claiming Universal Credit. And we must ask serious questions about why the Government has made up its mind to get rid of this vital boost to the overstrained budgets of low-income households.
We have recently seen research from the Resolution Foundation which has revealed that the cut to the uplift will negatively impact six million families and further reduce the incomes of the very poorest in our society by almost 6%.
It is not just callous, but bad economics, to plunge so many people further into financial insecurity and poverty at a time when we should be focussing on an economic recovery that lifts up all sections of our society.
The latest figures from the DWP show that as of February, around 867,000 households in London were reliant on Universal Credit. With the livelihoods of so many at stake, the Government should be taking long-overdue action to improve the system rather than make it less generous than it already is.
As well as keeping the £20 boost as a permanent fixture, we must also see the five-week waiting period for initial payments scrapped. It achieves nothing, but driving children and the most vulnerable in our communities into rent arrears, food insecurity and fuel poverty.
We also know from the latest data available that as of February, over 66,000 Londoners were being hit by the benefits cap- we clearly need to see an end to this. The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) have published analysis showing that families subject to the cap are on average £62 a week worse off. This can mean the difference between putting enough food on the table, the heating on in the winter, or making the rent.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, we saw the creation of the Welfare State to provide a safety net to those in need and put people on a steadier footing so they could help to drive the country’s economy forward.
The current approach of this Government towards gradually moving beyond this time of national crisis couldn’t be more different.