Boris Johnson’s last chance to find a social conscience

PM must use conference speech to announce Universal Credit U-turn – Plaid Cymru

Plaid Cymru’s Westminster leader, Liz Saville Roberts MP, has today (Wednesday 6 October) said that Boris Johnson’s conference speech is his “last chance to find a social conscience” and urged him to “U-turn on his destructive plans to cut £20 from the weekly budgets of millions of people.”

The £1,040 annual cut to the budgets of households in receipt of Universal Credit is going ahead today for some 275,000 people in Wales despite widespread warnings of the detrimental impact it will have on people living in poverty.

Ms Saville Roberts criticised the Tories’ “disingenuous rationale” for the cuts, after Ministers defended the move by claiming that getting back into work is the best way to tackle poverty. She pointed to the fact that 38 per cent of Welsh Universal Credit claimants are already in work and said that there is “no evidence that inflicting poverty incentivises work”.

She added that unless the Prime Minister uses his conference speech to reverse his “plan to slash £286 million from Wales’ local economies”, he and his party will have “destroyed what final shred of credibility they had on the so-called ‘levelling up’ agenda.”

Liz Saville Roberts MP said:

“Boris Johnson has a chance to do something different today. Rather than his usual mix of dinner party jokes and incoherent bluster, he could show courage. His conference speech today is his last chance to find a social conscience and to U-turn on his destructive plans to cut £20 from the weekly budgets of millions of people.

“Rather than the usual blather about the need to cut Universal Credit to encourage people into work, he could admit that there is no evidence that inflicting poverty incentivises work. He could put an end to that disingenuous rationale and admit that 38 per cent of Welsh Universal Credit claimants are already in work.

“He could recognise that the cost-of-living crisis requires a change of approach – and announce a reversal of his plan to slash £286 million from Wales’ local economies. Otherwise, he and his party will have destroyed what final shred of credibility they had on the so-called ‘levelling up’ agenda.”