EAT OR HEAT ..WE MUST STOP MOST SAVAGE CUT

Last-ditch call to keep UC lifeline for millions

BORIS Johnson faces demands to keep the £20 Universal Credit bonus for six further months, so poor families need not choose between heating and eating.

The uplift is due to end on Wednesday – when the PM addresses the Tory conference in Manchester.

In that city alone 312,000 workingage families, a quarter of its population, will lose out.

No10 insiders say Mr Johnson is now under mounting pressure from Cabinet ministers, led by Welfare Secretary Therese Coffey, to spare 5.5million families the £1,040-a-year income cut for at least this winter.

But he and Chancellor Rishi Sunak are adamant it must go ahead, as to delay till spring would result in a double whammy of UC falling and National Insurance going up.

A source said: “It’s madness to be cutting UC during the winter months. Voters will never forgive Boris Johnson if their choice is between eating and heating.”

Labour ex-PM Gordon Brown, writing today in the Sunday Mirror, says that “kicking millions of families when they are down” will shame ministers for ever.

Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said: “The Government must learn the lessons of the pandemic, cancel the UC cut and use our recovery to prepare better for future challenges.”

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation says cutting UC will plunge 500,000 claimants into poverty, including 200,000 children, with the impact most severe in the North East, North West and West Midlands.

JRF’s Katie Schmuecker added: “The PM is abandoning millions to hunger and hardship. The biggestever overnight cut to social security flies in the face of his mission to unite and level up our country.”

Mr Sunak hoped to quell anger by announcing a hardship fund in his conference speech tomorrow but details leaked last week.

And his £500million Household Income Support scheme is still not enough to compensate families losing an average £87 a month.

Ministers now refer to the chaos as the “EFFing crisis” as energy, fuel and food prices are rising together. Gas and electric bills alone are now predicted to spiral by £139 a year.

The PM faces a backlash from his party over the cut, including six exwork and pensions secretaries. Also opposed are all three devolved administrations plus 100 health, education, housing and poverty groups.