This week's MP's column comes from Bradford East MP Imran Hussain 

OVER the last year, many household budgets in Bradford and across the country have been hit hard by the impact that the coronavirus pandemic has had on their incomes, jobs and savings, and for many families, it may sadly be a long time before they are ever the same again.

As a result, many families, particularly those who were unfairly excluded from and denied Government support during the crisis, have been forced to turn to Universal Credit as a means of support to help them get by.

Yet, despite the increasing number of families in need of Universal Credit, from September this year, the Government will be cutting it by £20 a week, which will mean a total of over £1,000 a year gone from six million families across the country that are in receipt of Universal Credit, and almost 15,000 households in Bradford East, of which around a third are actually in employment.

For those families that have been stretched to the limit by rising rents, rising utility bills and a general rising cost of living, who may also have lost their jobs, facing falling wages, or receiving pay that fails to keep up with inflation, this £20 a week makes all the difference.

It helps give many families a little more breathing space and has helped put a little more space between them and the reality of life in poverty on the breadline, and so any cut to Universal Credit by the Government would simply be absolutely devastating.

Indeed in September last year, the social justice charity, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), found that cutting £20 a week from Universal Credit will risk bringing 700,000 more people across the country, including 300,000 more children into poverty, and could bring 500,000 more people into deep poverty that is classified as being more than 50 per cent below the poverty line.

In a country as rich and developed as ours, we should never be facing a situation where poverty will get worse, not better.

This impact will be even more pronounced in Bradford where we see around half of children growing up in poverty in Bradford East.

This life in poverty is through no fault of their own, but they are the ones who will suffer as a result of it regardless. They are the ones who are on the end of the Government’s cruel cuts to welfare, and they are the ones who will face poorer health, poorer educational outcomes and poorer life chances because of the Government’s decisions.
Cutting Universal Credit, particularly when we’ve not even recovered from the current crisis, will also inevitably see a further rise in food poverty and an increased demand for foodbanks, which over the last decade have become one of the saddest symbols of how deeply unequal our society has become.

Demand has already doubled over the last year, with the Trussell Trust reporting that the number of parcels distributed across Bradford almost doubled, and cutting the £20 that many use to help put food on the table will only serve to make the situation worse.

The Government, therefore, have to rethink their cruel cut to Universal Credit and make the £20 uplift permanent, whilst also extending it to what are termed “legacy benefits” such as JSA which have seen no increase over the last year, despite the coronavirus pandemic and those in receipt of it facing the same pressures as those on Universal Credit.

However, we also need to accept that keeping the £20 uplift to Universal Credit alone is not a cure for poverty and that it only treats the symptoms.

Instead, given that almost 1 in 3 people in Bradford East who are claiming Universal Credit are actually in work, and that work should be a route out of poverty, never something that keeps people trapped in it, we need to tackle the endemic problem of in-work poverty caused by low-pay, poor hours, and insecure work.

To do that we need to start with ending the exploitation and poor treatment by unscrupulous employers of those working on insecure contracts in the gig economy who are essentially cheated out of their rights, and by ensuring that people are paid properly for their work by legislating for and implementing a real living wage of at least £10 an hour that properly reflects the modern costs of living.

Nevertheless, whilst we will never win our fight against poverty overall without tackling low-pay and insecure work and ending the scourge of in-work poverty, if the Government presses ahead with cutting Universal Credit as planned in September, this fight won’t just stall and enter a stalemate, it will be lost.