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Around 700,000 people, including 300,000 children, will be “drifted” into poverty at a time of rising unemployment and plummeting living standards if the government cuts the pandemic increase of £ 20 a week to key benefits social security, warned charities.
The letter reflects mounting pressure on Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who did not say whether he would protect the £ 20 increase, which benefits around 16 million people, when he outlined his latest Covid-19 support package last week, despite warn that the UK was facing a winter of corporate bankruptcies and rising unemployment.
The increase of 20 pounds a week, worth 1,040 pounds a year for households with universal credit or tax credits, was introduced by the government in April as a temporary 12-month measure to help some low-income families to cope with the additional costs of the coronavirus.
In a letter to the chancellor, 50 charities say eliminating the upgrade would cut the livelihood of struggling families just as they face a major restriction in living standards. “Therefore, we urge you to make the improvement permanent and prevent families from being left adrift while they need help to stay afloat,” he says.
Those with the lowest incomes will be the hardest hit, the letter warns, with 500,000 people already struggling below the poverty line likely to be pushed to income levels close to destitution known as “deep poverty.” Single parents, people with disabilities, and black and minority ethnic households would be disproportionately affected.
The letter also calls for the £ 20 increase to be extended to 1.5 million people in senior benefits, such as employment and support allowance, which were excluded from the chancellor’s Covid benefit increase in April. “It is simply not correct that those with inherited benefits, who are mostly sick or disabled people and caregivers, and therefore have been at higher risk during this pandemic, have not received an equivalent lifeline.”
The scale of the potential financial shock faced by many families if the Covid momentum is not renewed is illustrated by an analysis by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which estimates that, depending on the circumstances, many minimum wage households that would shift to benefits after the Next April see your monthly income cut in half.
While the letter welcomes the government’s plans to boost skills training, it says they must be accompanied by a benefits system that “provides the certainty and security that people need to help them stay afloat so that they are equipped to seize every new opportunity and are protected from the long-term consequences of economic hardship ”.
Signatories include the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Trussell Trust, Save the Children, Barnardo’s, Child Poverty Action Group, Shelter, Oxfam GB, Salvation Army and 100 other charities from the Disability Benefits Consortium. The bishops of Durham and Portsmouth also signed the letter.
The cost of sustaining the £ 20-a-week increase would be £ 9bn a year, the charities say. This would come after years of cuts and freezes that have brought the main unemployment benefit rate to its lowest level since 1990. Even with the increase of £ 20 a week, the median benefit income for a family with children is 2900 pounds a year less. than in 2011.
Overall, 14.4 million people in the UK lived in poverty in 2018-19, of which 4.5 million were children. Approximately 4.5 million people, 7% of the population, were in extreme poverty and 7.1 million people (11%) were in persistent poverty, which means that they had lived below the poverty line. life line for at least two of the last three years.
A government spokesperson said: “We have invested an additional £ 9 billion in our welfare system to help those most in need during the pandemic, including increasing the universal credit and the labor tax credit by up to £ 20 per week, as well as introducing income protection schemes, mortgage vacations and additional support for tenants.
“The government is also focused on supporting people by helping them get jobs. This includes the launch of the kickstart scheme, a £ 2 billion fund to create hundreds of thousands of new and fully subsidized jobs for young people. ”
