Some of the UK's poorest families will be deprived of £65 extra a week as inflation bites, a damning report has claimed.
The Child Poverty Action Group has branded the benefit cap, which puts a £20,000 limit on each household’s welfare payments as “cruel and catastrophic”, and pointed out it has not changed since 2016 despite soaring prices.
The action group has warned of a “growing gulf” between the cap and benefit rates and the cost of living and said axing the cap would give an average £65 a week extra to those hit from April, when benefits are expected to rise around 10%, according to The Mirror. If the cap does not change, more than 100,000 households will not get an extra penny from the long-awaited uprating in April.
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CPAG chief executive Alison Garnham said: "The benefit cap is cruel and irrational at the best of times. Many parents subject to it can't escape it by working more because they are caring for very young children and housing costs are completely out of their control. But in the current crisis, its effects will be truly catastrophic for hundreds of thousands of children, pushing many into deep poverty. There can be no doubt that leaving it in place will damage the lives of children up and down the country."
Former Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey repeatedly refused to scrap the benefit cap, although she has said it may be reviewed in April. She is now deputy Prime Minister and has been replaced at the DWP by Chloe Smith.
The Government has claimed that the policy encourages families on benefits into work or a smaller flat, but critics say it has caused social cleansing as rents go up, pushing poorer families out of inner cities as many capped families end up paying out more of what they have on rent.
CPAG said the average capped couple with two children is £150 a week below the poverty line, and removing it would only cost £500m. The cap now hits 120,000 households - two thirds of them single parents - and 35,000 people are expected to fall into it this year.
However, the DWP claimed the cap provides a strong work incentive and and is fair to taxpayers. Two fifths of Universal Credit claimants are in work.
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