Cruel policy picks pockets of poor

UNIVERSAL Credit is a bureaucratic nightmare borne out of ideological vindictiveness.

Supporters of this so-called “welfare reform” will tell you it was designed to make the UK’s notoriously complicated benefit system easier to understand.

In reality, this vicious Tory policy was designed to do just one thing: Pick the pockets of the poor.

Ex-chancellor George Osborne gave the game away when he stripped £2billion out of Universal Credit in the same 2015 budget that cut inheritance tax for millionaires.

Osborne is long gone but the damage done by his monstrous assault on the poor is only starting to be felt. And his victims aren’t confined to those in the dole queues.

Many of those who are losing out are holding down a job and desperately trying to make ends meet. They are the “just about managing” group, who Theresa May famously pledged to help when she took the keys to Downing Street.

That includes hard-working staff at South Lanarkshire Council, who have been told the bizarre rules of Universal Credit mean they could lose money simply because of the way the council pay them.

More worrying still is the horrific situation of women being driven into prostitution because of this wicked policy.

Frank Field, who chairs Westminster’s work and pensions committee, stunned the Commons by revealing their plight in a question to Esther McVey.

Of course, Field got no answers from the Tory benefits axe-woman.

Because the Tories have no answers – just a cruel, unforgiveable campaign against society’s most vulnerable.