Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland ministers call on UK government to keep Universal Credit uplift

Published

3 years ago

August 30, 2021

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Ministers from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are calling on the UK government to keep the £20 uplift to Universal Credit in place beyond the current October deadline.

In a letter to Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey, they call for the policy to be made permanent and describe the change – which is due to come into effect in October – as “the biggest overnight reduction to a basic rate of social security since the modern welfare state began, more than 70 years ago”.

The ministers also raised concerns about the impact the reduction would have on poverty.

It comes as Prime Minister Boris Johnson is facing mounting pressure over the matter, with some members of his own Conservative backbenches calling for the government to reverse plans to cut Universal Credit payments

The government brought in a £20-per-week uplift as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic but it is due to be removed on 6 October.

The exact date the money stops being paid to an individual will vary depending on the day they usually receive Universal Credit, so for some people this will mean the last payment at the higher rate will be at the end of September.

Writing a letter last week, Tory MPs Peter Aldous and John Stevenson said the increase should be made permanent “so that low-income families continue to be able to make ends meet”.

The pair said they have “very serious concerns” about the removal of the top-up and urged ministers to listen to the “widespread warnings that are coming from all quarters” on the impact the cut could have on low income families.

They also said the move would go against the prime minister’s levelling-up agenda.

In the second letter addressed to ministers on the matter in one week, ministers from Holyrood, Cardiff and Stormont criticised the UK government’s plans to axe the uplift “at a time when they need financial support the most”.

The joint letter, from Scotland’s Social Justice Secretary Shona Robison, Welsh Social Justice Minister Jane Hutt and Northern Ireland’s Communities Minister Deirdre Hargey said people will lose more than £1,000 a year if the top-up is scrapped.

In it, the ministers expressed the “grave concerns of all three devolved administrations”.

“Failing to maintain the recent uplift to Universal Credit will increase hardship and poverty for people who are already struggling,” the letter states.

“To support the social and economic recovery, particularly as we ease out of the public health emergency, we urge you to reverse this decision and to strengthen the support offered by Universal Credit, instead of weakening it.”

The Scottish Government has already voiced concerns that ending the £20 increase could reduce social security payments north of the border by more than £460 million per year by 2023-24.

And Ms Coffey is told claimants in Northern Ireland would lose £55.5 million in this financial year alone while 280,940 people on Universal Credit in Wales will be worse off.

It comes as charity the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) warned against withdrawing the uplift which would see the “biggest overnight cut to the basic rate of social security since the Second World War”.

According to the JRF, most constituencies in England, Wales and Scotland will see more than one in three families and their children affected as a result of the £1,040-a-year cut.

And Citizens Advice have warned that a third of people on Universal Credit – over two million people – will end up in debt when the extra payment is removed.

Asked about the initial letter from two Conservative MPs last Thursday, the prime minister said: “The key focus for this government is on making sure that we come out of COVID strongly with a jobs-led recovery.

“And I’m very pleased to see the way the unemployment numbers, the unemployment rate has been falling, employment has been rising, but also wages have been rising. That’s the crucial thing.”

Fellow Conservative Andrew Bridgen has also joined the campaign to keep the uplift in place beyond October.

In a post on social media on Thursday, he said: “Research released today by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation reveals that 32% of working age families with children in North West Leicestershire have benefited from the £20 Universal Credit uplift that was introduced at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It has become part of people’s family budgeting in that time and I think it’s still needed. The economy is moving forward but the longer that uplift is in place now it is morally and politically impossible to remove it.

“The sooner the government come to that conclusion and remove the fear of its removal from the poorest households the better for all concerned.”

But last month, Chancellor Rishi Sunak confirmed the increase would be scrapped as it was “always intended to be a temporary measure”.

The number of people receiving the benefit has doubled during the pandemic, increasing its cost significantly.

The JRF says the policy change will have “deep and far-reaching consequences on families with children across Britain”.

Labour has said it would keep the uplift in place if it was in power and has pledged to eventually replace Universal Credit with a “fairer” system.

A UK government spokesperson said: “The temporary uplift to Universal Credit was designed to help claimants through the economic shock and financial disruption of the toughest stages of the pandemic, and it has done so.

“Universal Credit will continue to provide a vital safety net and with record vacancies available, alongside the successful vaccination rollout, it’s right that we now focus on our Plan for Jobs, helping claimants to increase their earnings by boosting their skills and getting into work, progressing in work or increasing their hours.”

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Robert Jenrick or Kemi Badenoch to be crowned Tory leader today – but whoever wins contest faces daunting task

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Robert Jenrick or Kemi Badenoch to be crowned Tory leader today - but whoever wins contest faces daunting task

The next leader of the Conservative party will be announced today, following a run-off between Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick.

The winner will replace Rishi Sunak as the leader of the opposition, after he led the party to a crushing election defeat in July, losing almost two thirds of its MPs.

His successor faces the daunting task of rebuilding the Tory party after years of division, scandal and economic turbulence, which saw Labour eject them from power by a landslide.

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Voting by tens of thousands of party members, who need to have joined at least 90 days ago, closed on Thursday. Both candidates have claimed the result will be close.

The Conservatives do not disclose how many members the party has, but the figure was about 172,000 in 2022, and research suggests they are disproportionately affluent, older white men.

Both candidates are seen as on the party’s right wing. Kemi Badenoch, 44, is the former trade secretary, who was born in London to middle-class Nigerian parents but spent most of her childhood in Lagos.

After moving back to the UK aged 16, she stayed with a family friend while taking her A-levels, and has spoken of her time working at McDonald’s as a teenager.

Having studied computer science at Sussex University, she then worked as a software engineer before entering London politics and becoming MP for Saffron Walden in Essex in 2017.

Ms Badenoch prides herself on being outspoken and has said the Conservatives lost because they “talked right and governed left”. But her critics paint her as abrasive and prone to misspeaking.

At the Conservative Party conference, a crucial staging post in the contest, she began her speech which followed three other male candidates by saying: “Nice speeches, boys, but I think you all know I’m the one everyone’s been waiting for.”

Her rival Robert Jenrick, 42, has been on a political journey. Elected as a Cameroon Conservative in 2014, he was one of the rising star ministers who swung behind Boris Johnson as prime minister and was later a vocal supporter of Rishi Sunak.

But he resigned as immigration minister in December 2023, claiming Sunak’s government was breaking its promises to cut immigration.

The MP for Newark in Nottinghamshire says he had a “working-class” upbringing in Wolverhampton. He read history at Cambridge University and worked at Christie’s auctioneers before winning a by-election.

After a long ministerial career where he was seen as mild-mannered, he is said to have been “radicalised” by his time at the Home Office and has focused his campaign on a promise to slash immigration and leave the European Convention on Human Rights to “stand for our nation and our culture, our identity and our way of life”.

He has put forward more policies than his rival, but attracted criticism for some of his claims – including that Britain’s former colonies owe the Empire a “debt of gratitude”.

A survey of party members by the website Conservative Home last week put Kemi Badenoch in the lead by 55 points to Mr Jenrick’s 31 with polls still open.

James Cleverly, the shadow home secretary and seen as a more centrist candidate was knocked out of the race last month. One of his supporters, the Conservative peer and former Scotland leader Ruth Davidson, has predicted neither Mr Jenrick nor Ms Badenoch will stay as leader until the next general election.

She told the Sky News Electoral Dysfunction podcast: “I’ve now voted for Robert Jenrick, who I don’t think will win. I struggle to believe that the person that’s the next leader of the Tory party is going to take us into the next election in five years’ time and I struggle to believe that they’re going to leave the leadership at a time of their own choosing.”

Henry Hill, deputy editor of ConHome, said the contest which Tory officials decided would take almost three months, has not led to enough scrutiny – because the MP rounds of voting took so long.

“We know much less [about them] than I think we should”, he said. “The problem with this contest is the party decided to go really long, but at the same time, they confined the membership vote – with just the final two – to just three weeks, and ballots dropped halfway through that process.

“We had months and months with loads of candidates in the race, but also that was the MP rounds and you’d think the MPs will have a chance to get to know these people already. For the actual choice the members are going to be making, there has been barely any time to scrutinise that.

He added: “I think the party remembers Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak taking weeks to take lumps out of each other in 2022 and wanted to avoid that. But it means the two campaigns haven’t really been attacking each other and that tends to be how you expose people’s weaknesses.”

After 14 years in government under five prime ministers, it is not since David Cameron in 2005 that the party has elected a leader to go into opposition – with a long road until the next general election.

Veteran ex-MP Graham Brady, who served as chair of the backbench 1922 committee, told Sky News that the position was more hopeful than after the 1997 landslide.

He said: “The biggest challenge for a leader of the opposition in these circumstances is just to be heard, to be noticed. I came into the House of Commons in 1997 at the time of that huge Blair landslide.

“We worked very, very hard in opposition during that parliament, and at the next general election [in 2001], we made a net gain of one seat.

“Now, there is a huge difference between now and 1997. The Blair government remained very popular and Tony Blair personally remained very popular through that whole parliament and beyond. And in 100 days or so, Keir Starmer has already fallen way behind.

“So I think we’ve got a great opportunity. I don’t think we’re up against an insuperable challenge, but it’s a big challenge.”

Kate Fall, now Baroness Fall, worked with Lord Cameron in opposition and later in Downing Street when he was prime minister in the coalition government. She said the next leader needed to keep the party “united and disciplined”.

“The first thing is to think about why we lost. The second thing is what do we have to say? Then they need to be agile, they need to be reactive, but pick their fight, not fight over everything. They also need to get out and about,” she said.

Lord Cameron travelled around the country holding question and answer sessions called Cameron Direct. “When you’re prime minister, you can’t do that as much as you like. But as leader of the opposition you can get out, talk to people, we thought it was very trendy to have a podcast and so on.”

She says this week’s budget gives the next leader “an ideological divide” to get into, but warns that the next leader must not risk alienating former Tories who switched to Labour and the Lib Dems.

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The leader of the opposition will cut their teeth at weekly Prime Minister’s Questions sessions opposite Sir Keir Starmer and respond to set piece events such as the budget.

They will need to get the party’s campaign machine ready for the local elections in England in May 2025, Scottish elections in 2026 and the next general election expected in 2029.