Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
THOUSANDS OF FAMILIES WILL BE WORSE OFF
Minister admits universal credit hardship for some
UNIVERSAL credit was in disarray last night after the Work and Pensions Secretary finally admitted it will leave families worse off.
Esther Mcvey yesterday refused to deny it would cost more than three million households £1,800 a year.
But she said: “We made tough decisions; some people will be worse off.”
It comes after Theresa May told the Commons this week that none of the 3.95 million claimants due to be transferred on to UC in a “managed migration” would see reductions in payments, thanks to a transition fund.
And Ms Mcvey last week said Tory benefit cuts were “fake news”.
Yesterday she tried to defend UC, rolling out in July, but also refused to deny telling the Cabinet millions of families will lose as much as £200 a month.
Earlier, Sir John Major said of claims some could lose up to £2,400 a year: “If you have people who have that degree of loss, that is not something that the majority of the British population would think of as fair.”
Echoing fellow ex-prime Minister Gordon Brown’s comments in the Mirror this week, he added it could cause “the sort of problems that the Conservative Party ran into with the Poll Tax”.
Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Margaret Greenwood said: “Now... this Government has no excuse for pushing ahead with their shameful programme.”
But a No10 spokeswoman denied the Prime Minister had misled MPS, adding: “She was answering a question about people moving through the managed migration process.”
Commons leader Andrea Leadsom said there will be “£3.1billion of transitional protections”. More than 8,000 people signed our Stop the Universal Credit Cruelty petition by last night.