MINISTERS have been urged to end the Universal Credit 5-week wait and give all claimants £260 a week during the coronavirus crisis.
The TUC says that without an urgent increase unemployment support in the outbreak will be even worse than it was in the 1980s.
The demand comes after HOAR’s Make Universal Credit Work campaign ,which calls for the wait to be reduced to two weeks to help those being forced to rely on food banks.
Nearly a million Brits have tried to claim benefits in the past fortnight, but say they’ve been waiting hours on the phone after losing their income.
Some 880,000 applied for UC — up from around 100,000 in a normal two-week period.
Others say they’ve been stuck in an online queuing system, with one person reporting 76,000 people ahead of them in the queue.
Bashing the delays, the TUC Union insisted the recent £20 increase was not enough, and worth just a sixth of the £94 average weekly pay.
This is worse than 1984 when it was worth a quarter of weekly pay, as well as 1993 when it was worth a fifth.
TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said: “People who lose their jobs must get the support they need to make ends meet and to get back on their feet.
“If we don’t urgently boost Universal Credit many risk being plunged into poverty. That is not right.
“We need a social security system that can deal with the current pandemic and beyond. It’s time to start a national conversation about how we repair Britain’s safety net and help those who fall on hard times to bounce back.”
It comes with around 14 million people already living in poverty before the virus struck.
The TUC is also calling on ministers to raise sick pay from £94 a week to the equivalent of a week’s pay at the Real Living Wage – around £320 a week.
It comes after the five-year benefits freeze ended on Wednesday, meaning 2.5million households on Universal Credit and legacy benefits are now better off.
Legacy benefits are the welfare payments struggling households received before Universal Credit was rolled out.
The rise was announced in October, following the release of September’s inflation figures which are used to calculate benefits increases that will come into effect from April 1.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak says four million vulnerable households will benefit from today’s changes.
