The alarm sounds over and over again. Every organisation concerned with the cost of living and children going without is trying to alert the public to the worsening crisis, ahead of the budget. If you’ve heard it all before, this is shockingly beyond normal, even for this government. This month, poverty will rise, and not by accident, as 6.4 million people on universal credit lose their cost of living support payment. That £900 emergency uplift has gone, but their outgoings will never return to where they were.
This cut follows the scrapping of the £20-a-week pandemic boost to universal credit – which the Institute for Fiscal Studies says plunged 100,000 more into poverty. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s most recent figures show that 3.8 million people experienced destitution in 2022 – a number that has doubled since 2017.
