Parliamentary briefing on uprating
Increasing benefits in line with earnings next April would mean a 10 per cent real-terms cut to support since 2021 – the biggest two-year reduction in social security ever – at a time when families are in desperate need of more support. It would plunge an additional 200,000 children into poverty on top of the almost 4 million who already live below the poverty line. In the UK, in 2022, we must do better.
We are calling for the government to urgently take two steps:
- Uprate all benefits by at least inflation – uprating by earnings will leave low-income families 10 per cent worse off than in 2020/21; uprating by inflation will leave then 5 per cent worse off. Uprating by 15 per cent would still only restore the value of benefits to their level after the £20 cut to universal credit.
- Remove the benefit cap – capped households are some of the poorest across the country and will receive no additional support in April as the cap has been frozen since 2016. The benefit cap would only cost £500 million to remove – 0.2 per cent of total spending on social security.
In the longer term, the support available through the social security system must be adequate to keep the living standards of children and families at a decent level. The government needs to invest again in social security - through policies like removing the two-child limit, increasing child benefit and rolling-out free school meals to all pupils.