Chancellor urged to make £20 uplift to universal credit and working tax credit permanent and extend increase to legacy benefits

Open letter from JRF and more than 50 charities and faith groups calls on government to 'keep doing the right thing, keep families afloat and keep the lifeline'

An open letter from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) and more than 50 charities and faith groups has urged Chancellor Rishi Sunak to make the £20 uplift to universal credit and working tax credit permanent and extend the increase to legacy benefits.

Today's joint letter - whose signatories include the Child Poverty Action Group, the Disability Benefits Consortium, the Bishop of Durham, the National Housing Federation, and the Trussell Trust - welcomes the Chancellor's swift action to introduce the £20 uplift at the start of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, but cautions that, if the uplift ends in April 2021 as planned, 'this good work risks being undermined'.

Highlighting JRF analysis showing that around 16 million people will be in households facing an overnight income loss equivalent to £1,040 - pulling 700,000 people into poverty and 500,000 more into deep poverty - the letter calls on the Chancellor to -

'... make the uplift permanent and stop families being cut adrift whilst they need help to stay afloat.'

The letter goes on to argue that it is not right that those on legacy benefits - who are mostly sick or disabled people and carers, and so have been most at risk during the pandemic - have not been thrown an equivalent lifeline, and urges the Chancellor to follow the advice of the Social Security Advisory Committee and support 1.5 million more people by applying an equivalent uplift to those on legacy benefits who have so far been excluded from increases.

Finally, the signatories say that - 

'Our modelling shows that the total cost of making the lifeline permanent (in addition to normal annual CPI uprating) and extending to legacy benefits would be around £9 billion a year. A significant investment but crucial for our nation’s recovery. We urge the government to keep doing the right thing, keep families afloat and keep the lifeline.'

The joint open letter to the Chancellor is available from jrf.org.uk