ON Wednesday in the House of Commons a vote was held on the Tory Government’s plan to cut the £20 a week uplift that has been applied to Universal Credit throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.

The SNP voted against this plan, but the Scottish Tories abstained. Douglas Ross has previously said that he didn’t “think it would be fair to pull support away from people while this pandemic continues to damage our way of life so deeply”, but given the chance to vote on it, siding with Boris and the UK Government was more important that providing support for these families.

Universal Credit has been hellish for people since it was rolled out. What was a good idea – combining lots of different social security measures into a single application to reduce complexity and confusion – was completely botched because the Tories always care more about saving money than they do about people. Certainly, more than they care about delivering a service that people can rely on. Just look at the recent free school meals scandal in England if you want more evidence that health and wellbeing are never going to be a priority for this government.

The six-week wait – eventually cut to five weeks – for the first payment of Universal Credit was found to leave claimants stuck in a spiral of debt, struggling with rent arrears and some unable to heat their homes or feed themselves. Endless evidence of this was provided to the government as we pleaded with them to go back to the drawing board and get this right. They never did.

The five-week wait is not the only problem, however. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation released data showing that around three million families, many of whom had people working in them, were going to be left with less after they were transferred to Universal Credit. The online service that was to be used by claimants to manage their application had issues from the start, and many who cannot access computers readily still find it extremely difficult to manage their claims.

You wouldn’t have known it if you listened only to the Government.

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Rather than taking the time to get this right they started ramping up the roll-out and transferred people to a system that was, and is, not equipped to provide the support people need. This, along with the Waspi issue, shows a pattern that the Tories will ramp up roll-outs regardless of how wrong they’ve got it, with no thought given to the consequences.

The greatest proof that they knew they were leaving people worse off, is the introduction of the £20 uplift at the start of the pandemic.

The uplift has been critical for people who work irregular hours and have seen their income reduced due to the impact of the pandemic response.

Just this week in a meeting of the Scottish Affairs Committee we heard evidence of how that extra £20 payment was just enough to help some people scrape by each month. The witnesses were in no doubt that its removal would plunge more people into poverty.

We also heard that where fraud is concerned, in their experience, a claimant is more likely to be a victim of fraud than commit fraud. People finding that someone else has been claiming UC in their name, therefore, leaving them even more vulnerable in an already stressful situation.

The £20 uplift should not be scrapped, primarily because it has always been clear that Universal Credit was far too low to begin with. It leaves families struggling, it forces people in spiralling debt, and the use of food banks has exploded directly as its roll-out accelerated.

With the vaccine here and being administered, the end of the pandemic is in sight and there is light at the end of this extremely long and dark tunnel. But we are not there yet and there is no suggestion that we will be there when this uplift is due to end.