A TOP United Nations committee has urged the UK Government to bin austerity welfare policies like the two-child cap.
The UN’s committee on economic, social and cultural rights has said Labour must “take corrective” measures in benefits policy, including scrapping the benefits cap and the five-week delay for the first payment of Universal Credit.
A new report by the committee also said the Government should assess all welfare policies introduced in the last 15 years.
The UK Government should increase welfare spending and boost the daily allowance to asylum seekers, with all payments “regularly indexed to the cost of living” to give people an “adequate standard of living”, the committee said.
And it recommended that social security bureaucracy should be reviewed to ensure it is not putting people off claiming welfare, while disability benefits like Personal Independence Payments and the Employment Support Allowance should be increased to ensure they “adequately cover additional disability-related costs”.
The SNP said the report was a “damning intervention” which showed that Westminster policies – under both the Tories and Labour – were “pushing more and more people into poverty”.
MSP Collette Stevenson said: “It is absolutely essential that Keir Starmer finally steps up and scraps the poverty-inducing two-child benefit cap.
“Keir Starmer must start listening to the experts, and take emergency action now to reduce poverty, by immediately scrapping the two-child benefit cap, the bedroom tax and its planned £3 billion of welfare cuts.”
Pointing to research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation which showed that the child poverty rate in Scotland from 23.7% to 21.8% by 2029, Stevenson added: “As a result of the SNP Government's leadership, Scotland is the only part of the UK where child poverty is expected to fall but UK government policies are still pushing thousands of children into poverty.
"For every step the SNP Government takes forward, Westminster drags Scotland back. Independence would give us the power to do things differently, tackle child poverty at the source, and not be forced to mitigate damaging Labour policies which harm us.”
It comes after reports said Labour were set to wipe billions from the benefits bill.
The UK Government was approached for comment.
