no longer be needed. Nevertheless, pressure is mounting on the government to revise its decision, with a recent study revealing that the benefit cut would leave jobless families unable to live decently.
Earlier this week, Gordon Brown wrote a passionate article for the Guardian, in which the former prime minister described the withdrawal of the £20 benefit the most “socially divisive and morally indefensible” decision he has witnessed in British politics.
“I have never seen a government act so callously and with so little concern for the consequences of their actions on the poorest in our society,” the former Labour leader wrote. “Ministers have published no study to explain their cut; offered no justification in, say, falling poverty figures (they are in fact rising); and offered only one pretext, a throwaway claim by the work and pensions secretary, Thérèse Coffey, that people on benefits could simply work more.”
According to Brown, while there is never the right moment to slash social security benefits, the current circumstances make it the worst possible time to withdraw such a raise. “[…] with the world dangling at the edge of an economic precipice, the price of basics – food and energy – threatening to rocket upwards and 30,000 COVID-19 cases a day, lives and livelihoods still hang in the balance, at this point, the government’s planned £20 a week cut to universal credit in October seems more economically illogical, socially divisive and morally indefensible than anything I have witnessed in this country’s politics.”
Previously, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the government’s aim right now is to move people into better-paid work. “As we move beyond that, we have to have a different emphasis, and the emphasis has to be on getting people into work and getting people into jobs. That’s what we’re doing,” he told the Commons liaison committee. When Labour chair of the work and pensions committee, Stephen Timms, highlighted the fact that the withdrawal of the uplift, would leave half a million people below the poverty line, the Prime Minister replied: “I think that the answer to that is to get people into work.”
