Credit pay cut will ‘hit hard’
A Shotts MSP says the forthcoming reduction in universal credit payments will “hit local families hard” as he highlighted the issue at First Minister’s Questions.
Neil Gray had earlier lodged a Holyrood motion noting that the £20-per-week increase which has been in place throughout the Covid pandemic “has been a lifeline for millions” and that its removal later this month will cost six million families an annual income of £1040 each.
His call for the increase to be made permanent has gained the support of 32 cross-party MSPs, representing nearly a quarter of the parliament’s members.
Mr Gray said: “The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has estimated that removing the uplift would force 500,000 people into poverty – including 200,000 children.
“Families on t he l owest incomes, those with children and particularly single parents, BAME families and those where someone is disabled are disproportionately affected.
“The plan by the UK government to remove the uplift to universal credit will force families into debt and increase the reliance on foodbanks. In this day and age, for organisations like foodbanks to exist is shocking, but I am eternally grateful that they do.”
Mr Gray chairs the social justice and social security committee at Holyrood; and along with his Welsh, Northern Irish and Westminster counterparts, recently wrote a joint letter addressed to both chancellor Rishi Sunak and work & pensions secretary Therese Coffey asking that the £20 increase be made permanent.
The Shotts representative said the response, that the government “is prioritising getting people into work”, is “ignoring the 1.7 million people on universal credit who the Department for Work & Pensions does not expect to get or find work, and almost two fifths of universal credit recipients who are already in work but still need to use services such as the Paul’s Parcels foodbank in Shotts which I [recently] visited.
“The benefit of the likes of the Scottish child payment will be wiped out and tens of thousands of people in Scotland will be forced into poverty at a stroke of the chancellor’s pen.”
Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister, responded: “We have strongly urged UK ministers not to push people into poverty through the cut of £20 to universal credit; the same calls have come from the children’s commissioners, poverty campaigners and even those on the Prime Minister’s own backbenches.
“The cut would be the biggest overnight reduction to a basic rate of social security since the beginning of the modern welfare state more than 70 years ago.
“Of course we want to support people into work where they can, but so many of the people on universal credit are already working and many others are not able to.”
Ms Coffey’s response to the committee chairs’ letter noted that the “temporary £20 a week increase” had originally been intended to end in March but was then extended for a further six months. She wrote that it “formed part of a £400 billion package of pandemic measures.