MP: Cutting £20-a-week Universal Credit boost will see more children in Deeside pushed back into poverty

The UK government’s decision to end the £20-a-week boost to Universal Credit will see more children in Deeside pushed back into poverty a local MP has warned.

The Universal Credit payment was increased by £20 a week in April 2020, to help struggling families during the pandemic.

Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey said on Wednesday that those receiving the uplift will start to see a downward adjustment to their payments in the autumn.

Speaking to MP’s, she said: “Ahead of October we will start communicating with the current claimants who receive the £20 to make them aware that it will be phased out and they will start to see an adjustment in their payments.”

Alyn and Deeside MP Mark Tami said the decision to cut the £20 uplift “makes no sense.”

He said: “Snatching money from Universal Credit is exactly the wrong thing to do. Most people who get Universal Credit are in work, or disabled.

“This cut will hit hardest those people who are working in badly paid jobs, the ‘just about managing’.”

“This cut will also see more children in Alyn & Deeside pushed back into poverty. We should be fighting to end child poverty, not increase it.”

“It makes no sense to grab this money from people who need it most, from a child poverty point of view, or from an economic point of view.”

“All of this money currently gets spent in our area, in local businesses, supporting local jobs.

The Deeside MP added: “What’s the Government going to do with it instead? I doubt the answer is spend it here, quite frankly.”

“Most people in our area, if they lost their job, would need Universal Credit to survive.”

“Boris Johnson and his Tory mates wouldn’t.”

“The pandemic has shown just how much at risk we all are – this time there was furlough but in any other economic crisis, there probably wouldn’t have been.”

“If the Government backs this back, it’s your safety net they’re cutting at – not their own.”

Unite union urged Chanchellor Rishi Sunak to think again on the proposal that will impact six million households in the UK.

Unite assistant general secretary Steve Turner said: “This is the news struggling families have been dreading. This cut will cause so much hardship and despair because that £20 was the difference between heating and eating.”

“It also makes no economic sense to pull cash from the economy at a time when the recovery is fragile.”

“That money is spent locally in our struggling high streets, yet the chancellor is draining support away from them at a time when they, too, need every penny.”

“The grim reality is that work doesn’t pay in this country. The chancellor should be focusing on halting the march of poverty pay, not taking £20 from those most at need.”

“Even before the pandemic, child poverty was a deeply entrenched problem in the UK – for the government to consign a further 420,000 children to hunger and hardship is a scandal.”

“Vulnerable children will suffer. The chancellor has to think again.”