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Universal Credit bosses have changed their tune over the impact the new welfare scheme is having on the use of foodbanks.

In February 2019, Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd admitted a link between the controversial benefit and the huge increase in people resorting to foodbanks.

She said at that time: "It is absolutely clear that there were challenges with the initial rollout of Universal Credit .

"And the main issue that led to an increase in foodbank use could have been the fact that people had difficulty accessing their money early enough.

"I have acknowledged the fact that people had difficulty accessing the money on time as one of the causes for the growth in foodbanks.

But she has now rowed back on the comments, telling MPs there are "many reasons" why someone might turn to charity handouts of food.

And she also claims the issues with payment delays of Universal Credit have now been resolved.

(Image: PA)

During a debate on inequality, Ms Rudd said: "There are many reasons why people turn to foodbanks.

"The early rollout of Universal Credit had some issues in terms of timeliness of the payment.

"That has now been corrected so that between 85, 86, 87 per cent of payments to recipients of Universal Credit are paid on time - which actually compares favourably with the previous legacy system."

Shadow work and pensions secretary Margaret Greenwood criticised the Government for its record on inequality.

She said the Government's own figures "tell a shocking story" with "4.1 million children growing up in poverty, an increase of half a million since 2010".

She added: "The last Labour government understood the importance of tackling child poverty and set statutory targets for reducing it based on household income with a coordinated strategy across government that took 1.1 million children out of poverty.

"Yet despite this, the Government abolished those targets and only continued to publish figures for poverty at all after pressure from Labour and voluntary organisations."

Ms Greenwood said a Labour Government would focus on social justice rather than social mobility.

She added: "Social mobility focuses on how easy it is for individuals to escape poverty.

"This is of course important but it does not address the wider issues of tackling the causes of poverty and inequality.

"So our goal has to be the delivery of a fair and just society."

Ms Rudd said more evidence would help the Government understand and respond to the issues better.

She said "new experimental statistics" to measure poverty would be published in 2020 and could help the Government "target support more effectively".

She added: "Evidence about the effects of poverty is vital in order to tackle it."

Mrs Rudd went on to say: "We will look at the Social Metrics Commission's new measure of poverty."

She said the Commission's new measure would look not only at people's income, but at the costs they had to incur and how much money people are left with after their costs had been factored in.

SNP work and pensions spokesman Neil Gray, however, said the Government's priorities are not "geared" to addressing inequality, and said Conservative spending cuts had driven inequality.

Mr Gray said: "Evidence shows they are not tackling burning injustices, they are fanning the flames with petrol."

Tory former equalities minister Justine Greening attacked Labour, saying social mobility need not come at the expense of social justice.

She said: "I also think it is fundamentally anti-aspiration, and what it shows is that this Labour party led by the right honourable member, the member for Islington North, is simply engaged, as far as I am concerned, in prioritising class warfare over aspiration, and I think that is absolutely wrong."

And fellow Conservative MP Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) said she was frustrated by what she called the "rewriting of history and pretending life under the last Labour government was somehow a land of milk and honey".

She said, back in 2005, women at her child's pre-school were "driven into debt and desperation" because they were overpaid tax credits by "an incompetent government that could not manage a benefit system".

And Ms Ford said Labour's legacy was "a million 18-25 year-olds who were not in employment, education or training" when they Tories took over in 2010.

Since then the youth unemployment rate has been halved, and there are "more women in work, more than ever before".

She finished by saying there is "more to do", but added: "Let's not hark back to a history that didn't actually exist, and think forward to the future."