ALMOST one-quarter of low-income families could lose more than £1,000 per year thanks to cuts to Universal Credit, a Barnsley MP has found.
Wentworth and Dearne MP John Healey has used data from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation to discover that almost half of all families with children in the constituency are claiming benefits.
From October 6, these families face a £20 per week cut but since the start of the pandemic, families in Barnsley who claimed the benefits rose by 78 per cent to more than 26,000 families.
John now hopes to petition the government to scrap the cut.
John said: “In Barnsley, there are thousands more people claiming Universal Credit than before the pandemic.
“People working full-time or working multiple jobs are still struggling to make ends meet and that’s unacceptable.
“I’m fighting to get the government to cancel the cut but if it goes ahead it will hit the lowest paid hardest, push more children into poverty and hurt our economic recovery.”
