Women forced to sell sex
Shocking impact of Tory Universal Credit
ESTHER McVey is under huge pressure to scrap Universal Credit – after an MP warned the “shambolic” policy is driving women into prostitution.
The Work and Pensions Secretary squirmed after being told women “have taken to the red-light district for the first time” because the new benefits system is pushing them into poverty.
But she refused to agree to meet with the women affected and asked former Labour minister Frank Field, who raised the alarm, to remind them “there are now record job opportunities” in the UK.
Field’s warning came as the UK Government came under fresh attack in the House of Commons yesterday over the disastrous rollout of Universal Credit.
The chairman of the work and pensions committee said he wrote to McVey last week to raise the issue. He added police and women’s charities in his constituency in Birkenhead, Merseyside, had become increasingly concerned about the benefit’s impact on women.
Heartless Tory minister McVey, who last week admitted that families will be “worse off ” under the new system, told Field: “We need to work with those ladies and see what help we can give them, from the work coaches right the way through to the charities and organisations.
“In the meantime, perhaps he could tell these ladies that we’ve now got record job vacancies – 830,000 job vacancies – and perhaps there are now other jobs on offer.”
Angela Murphy, executive director of Tomorrow’s Women Wirral, first raised the issue with Field.
She said: “We are talking about women who are nowhere near job-ready, so these are people who are literally living hand to mouth.”
Universal Credit has been rolled out in a few areas, with full implementation due next year.
Two in five claimants will lose £52 a week under the benefit and it’s feared struggling homeowners, working single parents and the disabled will be the hardest hit.
Tory MP Heidi Allen asked McVey if she was aware “how much support she has on this side of the House for our desire to see extra funding put in the Budget to restore the work allowances where they should be”.
McVey said she had raised the issue with Chancellor Philip Hammond and knew “all members of the House want to ensure that Universal Credit works for people who are claiming it”.
But Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Margaret Greenwood called on the Tories to stop the roll-out, adding: “There’s a real danger that hundreds of thousands of people could fall out of the social security system altogether and be pushed into poverty and left at risk of destitution.”
McVey dismissed those concerns as “scaremongering”.