Recommendation 100

At the start of the covid-19 pandemic Universal Credit was uplifted by £20 a week (£1,040 a year).244 The evidence we have heard has been very supportive of this policy and the change has helped Universal Credit claimants enormously during this time. Chris Birt from The Joseph Rowntree Foundation said that the uplift was ‘very welcome’.245 Nina Ballantyne of Citizens Advice Scotland added that ‘I heard somebody interviewed for the news the other day talking about the £20 a week making it barely enough to get by and that taking that away would mean not even having enough to get by’.246 They mentioned in written evidence that ‘Without the additional £20 a week, 8 in 10 CAB [Citizens Advice Bureaux] complex debt clients will be unable to meet their living costs’.247 Suzanne Lavelle of the Southside Housing Association said ‘The £20 uplift to Universal Credit did help, but the fact that that decision was made shows the inadequacy of the current benefits.’248 Professor McKeever, Ulster University explained to us that the reason the £20 uplift was so important to claimants was because ‘the benefit freeze249 that existed for so long [had] undervalued the worth of Universal Credit.’250