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It is now time to abandon the national roll out of the disastrous benefit-cutting Universal Credit .

Call a halt to this experiment - cruel and vindictive far beyond austerity - that is pushing child poverty among millions of hard-working British families to record levels.

From next July when three million more families begin to be herded on to Universal Credit, our country will face the kind of chaos we have not seen since the days of the hated Poll Tax.

With the convulsions of Brexit in March and the Universal Credit four months later we face a summer of division and despair.

From July each family on tax credits today will have to submit a wholly new form for Universal Credit – a policy Ministers have been warned will risk a breakdown in the system.

Instead the Government should order a review into what is going wrong – and give emergency help to those families now in despair because of benefit cuts.

With child poverty rising inexorably from three million in 2015 to four million now and to more than five million by 2022, October 29 should bring a Budget for children.

And to halt the rising epidemic, Child Benefit should be raised and child tax credits should be improved - as the one way, alongside a decent living wage, that we can get low-paid families out of poverty.

(Image: Getty Images Europe)



Today’s poverty explodes the myth that children are in poverty because their parents are work-shy and indolent.

Two thirds of the children in poverty have a parent in work - but earning too little to lift them out of poverty. In fact, nearly half - 42% - of households are in poverty where there is one breadwinner only in work and no other adult working.

The majority of the rest who are in poverty have disability in the family.

Savage Cuts are pushing them on to the breadline.

And after freezing Child Benefit and children’s tax credits for years Universal Credit is taking £3-billion out of the social security budget as it is introduced. Almost 3.2-million working families will, according to the Resolution Foundation, stand to lose an average of £48 a week.

(Image: Getty Images Europe)



For poor people the safety net is becoming not the welfare state - it is instead becoming food banks and charities.

We have seen what has happened in the Highlands where Universal Credit was first introduced. The UK Government has been asked to reimburse the local authority for the big increase in council rent arrears.

Right now, in my own home area food banks are running out of food as requests for help double as a result of Universal Credit.

Charities struggle to cope when giros which used to run out a few days before the next one now run out after a few days into the last one.

Having served 50 years in public life I am now seeing poverty and hardship that I never thought I would witness and that I honestly thought we had escaped from for ever decades ago.

Recently I have visited families that don’t have a cooker - and that means no hot food for the children. I have seen over the summer, when schools were out, girls and boys going for a whole day without a square meal – with charities struggling to improvise breakfast clubs and lunch clubs.

I have met parents who, no matter how many hours they work, cannot put enough food on the table for their children after they’ve paid the rent the heating and for other basic essentials.

The fact is that there is now more child poverty than under Margaret Thatcher and John Major. The income divide between rich and poor is bigger than in living memory.

(Image: PA)



Theresa May says her mission is to address burning injustice. Well the greatest burning injustice of all time is children going to school ill-clad and hungry. It is the poverty of the innocent – of children far too young to know they are not to blame.

But the Government have lit the torch of this burning injustice and they have fanned the flames, with their £3-billion of cuts. A return to poll tax style chaos in a summer of discontent lies ahead...more rent arrears, more dependence on food banks and endless real-life stories of the infirm driven into desolation.

As one of the architects of tax credits I remind people It was difficult enough to introduce tax credits even when we were spending billions more.

But to impose universal credit and to force three million to reapply for their benefits next year when on top of a child benefits freeze they’re spending £3-billion less is chaotic, cruel and vindictive far beyond austerity.

(Image: PA)



So I am calling today for the Government to abandon the 2019 national roll out of Universal Credit and end this harsh, harmful and hated experiment.

We need an urgent review on the lines suggested by the Child Poverty Action Group to be instigated and we must hear the voices of those who know what it’s like to have help cut short I join individuals and organisations who have called for a rethink including The Archbishop of Canterbury, The Church of Scotland, The Mayor of London, Disabled Against The Cuts, The Mayor of Liverpool, Mind, The Trussell Trust, Unison, Unite and Citizens Advice Bureau as well as the Child Poverty Action Group and most disabled charities.

The review should look closely at three options: redesign Universal Credit to make it fit for purpose; axing it in favour of reverting to the old system if UC is unfixable; or introduce a brand new system altogether.

And many good people have plenty of ideas about how this could be done Yes, right now, the issue of Brexit - our exit from Europe - is critical to our country.

But millions of our fellow citizens are facing an equally big nightmare - anxious and insecure because they have no exit from poverty.

https://www.change.org/p/theresa-may-mp-stop-the-rollout-of-universal-credit-and-replace-it-with-a-fairer-system