More than half a million of the poorest people in the UK were denied a £326 summer cost-of-living payment that would have helped with rocketing bills, MirrorOnline reports.
Boris Johnson offered the cash - the first half of a total £650 - to more than 8 million people on benefits in July to show them "we are on their side". But 551,000 Universal Credit claimants missed out on the money because they earned too much from work.
Labour believe some of them had two paydays fall in the same 30-day qualifying period because their wages come every four weeks, and opposition politicians said this "staggering" technicality meant their income was temporarily too high to get a cost-of-living payment - even though usually it is much lower.
