Category Archives: Benefits

Extend Covid measures or households face ‘cliff edges’, says Labour

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Universal credit boost, ban on evictions and mortgage holiday must continue, party says

Many low- and middle-income households will face financial hardship unless ministers maintain support for those who have lost their jobs or experienced steep cuts in income during the second wave of Covid-19, Labour has said.

The shadow chancellor, Anneliese Dodds, said in a new year message to Rishi Sunak that the chancellor must extend a range of Covid-19 rescue measures due to run out over the next three months “to protect struggling households from financial ruin”.

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Up to £3.5bn furlough scheme cash may have been wrongly paid out

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Error and fraud rate for scheme estimated at between 5% and 10%, says HMRC chief

The government believes it may have paid out up to £3.5bn in wrong or fraudulent claims for the furlough scheme.

Jim Harra, the top civil servant at HM Revenue & Customs, said that his staff had calculated for the possibility that as much as 10% of the money might have gone to the wrong places.

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Hunger, violence, cramped housing: lockdown life for the poorest children

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Many families are enduring terrible hardship, and campaigners fear long-term consequences for the most vulnerable in society

“Before Covid, my three children and I had structure. We would wake up in the morning, they would go to school and do their thing, and I would do mine. We had joy,” says Vicky (not her real name), a single parent living in one of the most disadvantaged boroughs in the country, in south London.

The capital has the highest rate of child poverty in any English region – more than 700,000 children, and 43% of children in inner London. Over the past five years, child poverty has risen in every London borough, in part because of the capital’s uniquely high housing, childcare and living costs, as well as low pay (72% of children in poverty are in working households) and the impact of £39bn cut nationally from the benefit system since 2010. Then, in March, came Covid-19 and lockdown, deepening and accelerating deprivation across the UK, increasing rates of child abuse, mental ill-health and domestic violence.

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Councils ask for UK to lift bars on emergency help for migrants

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Call to suspend ‘NRPF’ hostile environment measure that stops some people accessing public funds

Local authorities have called on the government to suspend the controversial “no recourse to public funds” immigration status for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic, to prevent thousands from falling into destitution and homelessness.

High numbers of people who have this status attached to their visas have been approaching councils for emergency assistance during the pandemic. Many are struggling to survive during the exceptional circumstances of lockdown, with no safety net, according to the Local Government Association (LGA), which represents councils in England and Wales.

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‘Judge me fairly’: man who starved to death’s plea to welfare officials

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Handwritten letter found in Errol Graham’s flat, where he died after his benefits were cut

Errol Graham, a desperately ill man who died of starvation when his benefits were cut off, wrote a moving letter pleading with welfare officials to “judge me fairly” because he was overwhelmed by depression.

The handwritten letter, seen by the Guardian, was released by Graham’s family as they launched a legal attempt to prove that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) acted unlawfully and put him at risk by failing to put in place effective safeguards to protect vulnerable benefit claimants.

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Disabled man starved to death after DWP stopped his benefits

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MPs call for inquiry into case of Errol Graham, 57, who weighed 28.5kg when he was found dead

MPs and campaigners have called for an independent inquiry after it emerged a disabled man with a long history of mental illness starved to death just months after welfare officials stopped his out-of-work and housing benefits.

Errol Graham, a 57-year-old grandfather, and in his younger days a keen amateur footballer, weighed just four and a half stone (28.5kg) when his emaciated body was discovered by bailiffs who had broken down his front door to evict him for non-payment of rent.

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Nearly 700,000 Americans to lose food stamps under new Trump policy

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Move will limit states from exempting work-eligible adults from having to maintain steady employment to receive benefits

Hundreds of thousands of Americans who rely on the federal food stamp program will lose their benefits under a new Trump administration rule that will tighten work requirements for recipients.

The move by the administration is the latest in its attempt to scale back the social safety net for low-income Americans. It is the first of three proposed rules targeting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as Snap, to be finalized. The program feeds more than 36 million people.

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Universal credit is failing military veterans, study finds

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Veterans with complex needs report overwhelmingly negative experiences of benefits system

Ex-service personnel with physical and mental health issues have described how they felt ignored and let down by their country after falling foul of a social security system that failed to offer adequate support when they fell on hard times.

Research has found that many armed forces veterans with complex needs report overwhelmingly negative experiences of universal credit, fit-for-work tests used to gauge eligibility for disability benefits, and benefit sanctions.

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‘I’ve absolutely had enough’: Tory MP embarks on anti-austerity tour

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Heidi Allen joins former Labour MP Frank Field on mission to highlight the poverty caused by her party’s policies

Heidi Allen and Frank Field make an odd partnership at first glance. Allen, 44, the Conservative MP for one of Britain’s richest constituencies, and Field, 76, a Labour MP for 39 years until he resigned over antisemitism in the party, have bonded across the Commons over a shared outrage at poverty. Now they have embarked on a nationwide tour in search of the “other England” shaped by the austerity policies pioneered by Allen’s party. It is proving emotional.

Visits to the poorest corners of Newcastle, Glasgow, Morecambe and Cornwall beckon, but they have started in London and Leicester, where on Thursday they heard stories of an illiterate man sanctioned so often under universal credit that he lives on £5 a week; a man so poor he sold all but the clothes he was wearing; and someone being told to walk 44 miles to attend a job interview, despite having had a stroke, to save the state the cost of a £15 bus ticket.

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