Benefit cuts ‘will dump a million kids into poverty’
CUTS to Universal Credit will throw more than a million children into poverty and create an “austerity generation”, a report warns.
The Child Poverty Action Group and Institute for Public Policy Research say lone parent homes and the disabled will be worst hit.
The promise of greater rewards from work has also been “broken”, they add.
Cuts to tax credits will leave working families £930 a year worse off with the new Universal Credit system costing them £420.
A lone parent with two children working 16 hours a week for the national minimum wage and renting in an average cost area would be £1,658 worse off in 2020. A couple, one fulltime and one working 16 hours per week, with kids aged two and five, and renting privately would be £1,283 worse off.
Alison Garnham, of CPAG, said: “Government policy has been creating an austerity generation.”
The Department for Work and Pensions insisted: “There are 200,000 fewer children in poverty than in 2010.”