Even by Tory Standards Taking £20 from Universal Credit Claimants is the Cruellest of Cuts.

 

All governments tend to operate with one eye on the history books in the hope they will say about them. Even more so when led, as the current one is, by a prime minister who has pretentions towards being something of a historian himself.

A little over two years in and the judgement on the Johnson government does not show signs of being a positive one.

How badly have they messed up; let me count the ways?

There’s the pandemic for a start, from day one the Johnson government has lurched from disaster to catastrophe and back again, most of them of their own making. Then there’s ‘levelling up’, that hasn’t turned out at all well with the blue paint hastily daubed over the red wall starting to look rather thin already. As for Brexit, words would fail Shakespeare were he to try and describe the mess that has turned into.

All this though pales into insignificance compared to the next mistake set to come thundering down the track. As usual it is one, they have been warned about but decided to ignore.

This time it takes the shape of the plans to remove the £20 uplift to Universal Credit introduced at the start of the pandemic and set to vanish along with the furlough scheme at the end of this month.

Figures from the Department of Work and Pensions show that 6.0 million people were claiming Universal Credit in January, a 98% increase since March last year, many of them are in work.

The UK has an enduring and shaming history of allowing too many of its people, currently 14.5 million according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, to exist, as opposed to live, below the poverty line. Even before the pandemic average incomes for people on the lowest incomes was falling behind the national average with in work poverty currently at 13%.

The root cause of this problem is a decade of ‘austerity’ driven freezes and cuts to benefits and a national living wage that is far from generous. Most families claiming Universal Credit are routinely faced with the choice between paying the bills or putting food on the table. An ugly and brutal economic trade off any decent society would have relegated to the history books long ago.

Covid-19 has taken existing inequalities and yanked the dial up to eleven, adding an uplift of £20 to the meagre amount struggling families must live on was a good thing to do, but not nearly enough to solve the problem. Snatching it away when nothing has been put in place to support them is both foolish and cruel.

Unfortunately, but not unsurprisingly the government isn’t inclined to listen to any of the many voices advising a rethink. Even though one of these belongs to Iain Duncan Smith, the ‘father’ of Universal Credit.

In July he, along with five other former Tory Work and Pensions secretaries wrote to chancellor Rishi Sunak calling for the uplift to stay in place. Speaking to the BBC at the time he said that removing it would ‘damage living standards, health and opportunities’ for those most in need of help as we emerge into something more like normality.

Sadly Therese Coffey, the current incumbent, appears to be stuck in a ‘get on your bike’ 1980’s time-warp. Also speaking to the BBC earlier this week she said that losing the £20 uplift would just mean claimants needed to do ‘two hours extra work every week’ to make up the loss. Going on to airily promise that the government would do something to help them find this, after all there are always leaves and the like that need sweeping up around the estate.

Adam Corlett, principal economist at the Resolution Foundation, explained with stark simplicity how ‘a small increase in working hours will be nowhere near enough to cover the £20 a week cut’.

This is how it works, for every £1 extra they earn a Universal Credit claimant loses 63p because payments taper off, so two hours work at £8.91 each, the current National Living Wage, would be cut to £6.60, if they do enough hours to pay tax and national insurance and this falls to £4.48, add in childcare, travel, and pension contributions and this is down to £2.24. To make up the £20 pound lost it would be necessary to work for nine hours, not the two suggested by MS Coffey.

That she kept her job in Thursday’s reshuffle is sad and surprising, seemingly unthinking loyalty trumps capability. Her attitude though perfectly encapsulates that of the government of which she is a part.

Behind the ‘bumbling Boris’ persona complete with fright wig hairstyle and eccentric mannerisms is a hard right disciple of neo-liberal economics taken to the level of fundamentalism sneering for all he’s worth at the people he fooled into voting for him. Driving the project that began in 1979 to its ugly conclusions is the only objective for Johnson and his government wrecking the lives and hopes of working people are just so much collateral damage.

Even by these standards scrapping the uplift to Universal Credit is something like political and social madness. It will trap a whole generation in poverty and poor physical and mental health, potential that could have made us all richer will go to waste.

History is the court populist politicians like to appeal to claiming that it will ultimately justify their actions. If justice exists it will have only one judgement to pass on Boris Johnson and all those who are complicit in the actions of his government: guilty.