LIZ Truss is set to reveal whether benefits will be increased in line with inflation in just WEEKS.
Pensions Minister Victoria Prentis confirmed this morning that an announcement should come by the end of November.
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The decision will affect all benefit payments from April 2023.
For weeks the PM has refused to commit to hiking UC in line with inflation next year.
The issue has caused a massive rift in Westminster, with many of Ms Truss’ own MPs urging her to make the change.
At Tory conference last week Cabinet Minister Penny Mordaunt dramatically broke ranks to implore her boss to do it.
She said: “It makes sense to do so. That’s what I voted for before and so have a lot of my colleagues.”
Other top Tories including Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg and Work and Pensions Secretary Chloe Smith are understood to be supportive.
But Ms Truss is insistent that a decision won’t be made until November.
She’s previously been torn between uprating benefits in line with wages or with inflation.
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Tomorrow the Department for Work and Pensions will receive September figures on earnings, while next week statistics on inflation are due in Whitehall.
Ms Smith will consider the figures before coming to a final decision with the PM.
Ms Prentis told Sky News today: “No decision has been taken about the uprating of benefits. It’s quite a long and process-driven decision.
“We make a decision and we communicate it usually by the end of November.
“It’s really important that we have all the statistics and all the figures about poverty at our disposal before we make this critically important decision.”
With inflation sitting at a whopping 9.9 per cent, UC claimants could experience a chunky real terms pay cut without an uplift.
The charity Child Poverty Action Groom has warned that 450,000 people could be shoved into poverty as a result too.
Ms Prentis said: “I can’t possibly make the decision on my own now. We need to get everything at our disposal and then I will make sure I make that decision.”
This morning Tory peer Baroness Stroud, who helped establish UC, implored the PM to hike benefits in line with inflation rather than wages.
She commented: “You don’t build growth on the backs of the poor.”
