The Prime Minister must know he can’t scare people into good health, but his words this morning will be chilling for low-income families up and down the country who rely on our social security system for help.
For almost fifteen years, the four million kids from poor families have been at the bottom of the pile and today is no different. This was a Budget all but blind to buckling family budgets and broken public services and will leave a legacy of crumbling classrooms, cold homes, and empty tummies.
Our pre-Budget briefing details how best to invest financial support in children to reduce child poverty and give every child the chance to fulfil their potential.
Universal credit (UC) claimants are not always getting extra amounts of UC they’re entitled to when they become eligible for some other benefits because of poor data-sharing within the DWP.
Our interviews show that claimants did not have the information they needed or wanted to understand how moving to UC would affect them. Such misinformation and misunderstanding are likely to be reasons some people are not moving to UC despite having a strong financial incentive to do so.
It’s right that benefits are uprated as usual but this should never have been in doubt and legislation mandating inflationary increases is needed as a basic protection for living standards. Struggling families have been worrying themselves sick for months about whether an unmanageable income cut was coming in order to provide the government with a rabbit-out-of-the-hat moment.
28% of tax credit claimants who are required to move to universal credit haven’t claimed and have had their benefits stopped and their cost-of-living payments also at stake.
Two-thirds of people sent a migration notice between November 2022 and March 2023 made a successful UC claim before their migration deadline. A further 5 per cent made a claim after their deadline had passed. And 28 per cent did not claim UC at all and had their legacy benefit payments terminated. We are concerned that a sizeable minority of claimants are falling through the gaps.
The benefit cap and the two-child limit has caused hardship to tens of thousands of families, with both policies failing to meet their original aims, according to the findings of a new study.