Rishi Sunak confirms Universal Credit will be cut by £20 a week in October after extension in Budget

UNIVERSAL Credit claimants will see their payments fall by £20 a week from October, Chancellor Rishi Sunak has confirmed.

The temporary boost, first implemented last year due to the coronavirus crisis, was extended by six months in yesterday’s Budget.

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The support is worth £1,040 a year and was initially only supposed to last a year, until March 31.

Instead, claimants will now continue to get the extra cash until the autumn.

However, campaigners had called for Mr Sunak to go further and said the boost should be made permanent.

But the Chancellor is said to be fixed on ending the uplift from October.

Asked today if he will extend it beyond another six months, Mr Sunak told BBC Breakfast: “No, we put this in place at the beginning of the crisis last year to help people in the national lockdown.

“Obviously the restrictions have gone on for longer than any of us would have hoped or liked.

“But six months’ extension to the Universal Credit uplift means it will be in place well beyond the end of this national lockdown.

“And remember, it’s just one of the things we’re doing to help people.”

However, charities have warned the move would bring the incomes of benefit recipients down to levels not seen since the 1990s.

Helen Barnard, director of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said: “This decision creates a perfect storm for the end of this year, with the main rate of unemployment support cut to its lowest level in real terms since 1990 just as furlough ends and job losses are expected to peak.

“This makes no sense and will pull hundreds of thousands more people into poverty as we head into winter.”

Meanwhile, Mr Sunak’s decision to spend more to support the economic recovery now and avoid tax raises until later was welcomed by the Resolution Foundation.

But it noted that while GDP is set to grow this year by 4%, that might not feed through to better living standards.

Wages by the middle of the decade are set to remain £1,200 a year – or 4.3% – below where they would have been without the pandemic, it added.

The pandemic has pushed millions of more people onto the benefits system in the past year as businesses and employers have been forced to close.

As of January 2021, six million Brits were on Universal Credit, up from 2.8million in the some month a year earlier, according to government stats.

Everyone who claims Universal Credit gets the £20 a week uplift, regardless of what elements you are entitled to.

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The cash has been added automatically to the standard allowance element for all Universal Credit claimants and can be viewed in online journals.

We explain seven other ways to get help paying bills if you’re on Universal Credit.

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This post first appeared on thesun.co.uk