APPG on Poverty highlights disproportionate effect that removing the £20 universal credit ‘uplift’ would have on vulnerable groups

All-Party Group of MPs calls for uplift to be maintained and extended to legacy benefits, and for the benefit cap to be suspended

In a new report, the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Poverty has highlighted the disproportionate effect that removing the £20 universal credit ‘uplift’  would have on vulnerable groups.

Introduced as a temporary measure at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the £20 uplift to universal credit (and working tax credit) is currently due to expire at the end of March 2021. With the government having said in November 2020 that it needed 'more clarity on the national economic and social picture' before deciding the best way to support low-income families from April, the APPG launched a call for evidence in December 2020 on the impact of ending the uplift.

Having since heard evidence from a range of organisations and individuals, the APPG's has today published a new report, Report of the APPG on Poverty evidence session on the £20 uplift, that presents findings including that -

• if the uplift was withdrawn, 683,000 households, including 824,000 children, would no longer be able to afford to meet their essential needs, with the number growing by 11 per cent when the impact of the two-child limit is taken into account; and
• removal of the uplift will have a disproportionate impact on certain groups: 20 per cent of affected people are from a BAME background, half of affected households have a member who is disabled, and 60 per cent of all single parents will experience the cut.

Highlighting that it also heard evidence that the costs of poverty will surpass the £6 billion cost of extending the uplift, and that there is a strong economic argument for keeping the uplift since investment in social security boosts consumer spending more effectively than other policies, the APPG calls on the government to -

• maintain the £20 uplift;
• extend the £20 uplift to legacy and related benefits; and
• suspend the benefit cap which is preventing thousands of households from benefiting from the uplift.

For more information, see APPG publishes report on the impact on poverty of not keeping the £20 uplift in universal credit from appgpoverty.org.uk