£20 cut ‘leaves many in poverty’
Around one in 10 working-age people across Bath and North East Somerset will be hit by the £20-a-week cut to Universal Credit as the Government is set to remove the benefit boost.
Anti-poverty charity the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) says Boris Johnson is “abandoning millions to hunger and hardship” by ending the uplift as families face a looming cost of living crisis.
Across the area, 12,867 people were claiming Universal Credit (UC) on August 12 - the latest Department for Work and Pensions figures show. That’s 10 per cent of the people aged between 16 and 64 in the area, according to the latest Office for National Statistics population estimates. But that was still below the average of 14 per cent across Britain as a whole.
The figures include some claimants who did not receive any money that month as it is not possible to exclude these cases.
The number of claimants in the Bath and North East Somerset area in August was 73 per cent higher than the 7,435 on the benefit in February 2020 - the last full month before the Covid-19 pandemic sent demand for help soaring.
In August 2019, 6,918 people in the area were claiming the benefit.
The £20 weekly uplift to UC was introduced in March 2020 to help tackle hardship caused by the pandemic, but was ended on Wednesday, October 6.
The increase also applied to Work Tax Credits, though local figures on the number of individuals claiming it are not available.
But analysis by JRF found that 15 per cent of working-age families across Bath and North East Somerset would be affected by the reduction to both types of benefit.
The figure rose to 28 per cent when only including working-age families with children, according to the charity’s research.
The Government has repeatedly stressed that the weekly increase was only a temporary measure.
Voices from across the political spectrum have called for the increase to be made permanent, as the wind-up of other support such as the furlough scheme means even more people may need help.
Across Britain, nearly six million people were on UC in August - just over double the number in February 2020 and higher still than in August 2019.
Katie Schmuecker, of JRF, said: “The Prime Minister is abandoning millions to hunger and hardship with his eyes wide open.
“The biggest ever overnight cut to social security flies in the face of the Government’s mission to unite and level up our country.
“When the increase to UC was introduced, the Chancellor said it was to “strengthen the safety net” – a tacit admission a decade of cuts and freezes had left our social security lifeline to wear thin and threadbare for families in and out of work relying on it.
A Government spokesperson said: “We’ve always been clear that the uplift to Universal Credit was temporary. It was designed to help claimants through the economic shock and financial disruption of the toughest stages of the pandemic, and it has done so.”