Universal Credit claimants could get extra £25 a week

Universal Credit claimants could get an extra £25 a week if a top-up payment brought in during the COVID-19 pandemic is reinstated.

An extra £20 a week payment was bought during the coronavirus lockdown and was later scrapped.

Now SNP MP David Linden is calling for the uplifted to be reinstated and at a higher rate of £25 a week.

He said in Parliament: “Rather than offering one-off payments to shore up struggling families’ incomes, the DWP should reverse the damaging policies that are impacting the most vulnerable people.

“It should reinstate the Universal Credit uplift at £25 per week and, of course, extend it to legacy benefits.”

He said the top-up payment should be extended to those on disability benefits who missed out on the payment during the pandemic.

Research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies says found scrapping the top-up may have pushed 100,000 people into absolute poverty in 2022/2023.

People on Universal Credit and other means-tested benefits received a £650 payment over the last financial year.

A similar payment of £900 is going out this tax year in three instalments. The first £301 payment has already gone out with the second instalment of £300 to arrive in people’s bank accounts in autumn 2023. The final payment of £299 will go out in spring 2024.

Mr Linden also said: “The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s latest cost of living tracker found that 5.7 million low-income households are having to cut down or skip meals because they do not have enough money for food, while the number going without items such as food, heating and basic toiletries has remained at about seven million for more than a year – all of that in the sixth largest economy in the world.”

There has been some relief for Britons in recent weeks as energy bills went down from the start of July.

The Ofgem price cap went down from the start of the month with average bills for a typical household falling from £2,500 a year to £2,074 a year.

The standard allowance for Universal Credit is:

• Single under 25: £292.11 (up from £265.31 per month)
• Single 25 or over: £368.74 (up from £334.91 per month)
• Joint claimants both under 25: £458.51 (up from £416.45 per month)
• Joint claimants, one or both 25 or over: £578.82 (up from £525.72 per month).

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