Tracy Brabin joins Gordon Brown in campaign to stop benefit cuts

Metro mayors including West Yorkshire’s Tracy Brabin, Liverpool’s Steve Rotheram, as well as former prime minister Gordon Brown, have added their support to a petition by campaign group 38 Degrees.

It warns that hundreds of thousands of working families risk sliding further into poverty, fearing homelessness and turning to food banks.

The Government today insisted that no decision had yet been taken on whether benefits would see rises in line with inflation, or in line with earnings - which would be a real-terms cut to thousands of households across the country during the cost of living crisis.

Tracy Brabin said: "Across West Yorkshire, too many families are already struggling to get by, with too many children going to school hungry and coming back to cold, damp homes.

“It is both unjust and unimaginable that in the midst of this cost of living crisis the government is contemplating cutting the living standards of those with the least, plunging more families and children into poverty.

"In West Yorkshire we care about our neighbours and friends who will feel the sharp end of the Government's cruel, inhumane universal credit policy. The government must keep their promise to the people of West Yorkshire and beyond, to increase Universal Credit in line with inflation and rescue our families in this cost of living crisis."

Any move to raise Universal Credit in line with wages, instead of prices, would leave struggling families £40 worse off a week, according to Mr Brown, and would be a “stain on the nation’s soul”.

Mr Brown said: “This petition is a people’s warning to the Government that forcing more people into poverty is unacceptable.

“The immoral arithmetic of their deprivation policy is so stunning that breaking the link would be a stain on our nation’s soul and a scar on our collective conscience: families of two children on Universal Credit – already £28 a week worse off since last October – despite the heating bill help, will likely be nearly £40 a week down on last October if benefits are linked only to earnings and not prices.

“Too many families are already choosing between heating and eating and children going to school ill-clad and hungry, and in some of the poorest areas of the country children have already been diagnosed with malnutrition. We need to arrest poverty and the causes of poverty. More cuts in Universal Credit will do the opposite.

“Children are worst affected and the situation for families is perilous. Two hundred thousand more children will be pushed into poverty if benefits are uprated only by wages, with almost all these children living in working families where at least one parent is at work but on low pay.”