The planned abolition of the £20 uplift is the latest attack on claimants caught in an unfair benefits system, says Mark Newbury. Plus letters from Jane Middleton and Manuela Gonnermann
Your editorial (14 September) is correct in highlighting the link between access to affordable social housing and childcare as a determining factor in childhood poverty. But with its focus on the imminent removal of the £20 per week uplift, it does not address two structural issues relating to universal credit. First, help with housing costs is restricted. Those living in rented accommodation – regardless of being in paid employment or not – face a cap on how much rent is taken into account under either the local housing allowance (for those in the private rented sector) or the “bedroom tax” (for those in social housing), with any shortfall met from the claimants’ income.
Second, there is “benefit capping”. The original benefit cap restricts entitlement to benefit (including help with rental costs) to a maximum amount per month and impacts larger families not in paid employment. A more insidious version, the two-child policy, removed the entitlement to any state support, bar child benefit, for a third and any subsequent child born after April 2017. The policy applies to families who are wholly benefit-dependant and to those in work. In real terms, it represents a cut in universal credit of up to £237.08 per child per month.