Liz Truss under pressure to boost benefit payments in line with inflation

A string of peers voiced their concerns in the Lords as Prime Minister Liz Truss faced mounting pressure to raise benefits in line with inflation.

The Government has been considering whether to link an increase to earnings rather than the currently much higher measure of prices.

Labour peer Baroness Sherlock cautioned against benefits claimants “paying the price for the fallout from the Government’s disastrous budget” as she asked for clarity over plans for increasing social security payments.

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She said: “Last April, when inflation was 9%, benefits were raised by just 3.1% because that had been the CPI rate the previous September and them’s the rules.

“At the time, despite big pressure, Therese Coffey, then at DWP (the Department for Work and Pensions), said, ‘no, we must stick with this system year-on-year’, and the ministers promised that benefits next year would rise again by inflation, so it would all come out in the wash.

“Now we hear the Prime Minister is threatening to abandon that promise, even suggesting that earnings might be fairer to workers, as though we’re saying to millions of workers, your wages are going up by less than inflation, we’ll fix that by cutting your universal credit and your child benefit as well.

“As well as low-paid workers, these benefits support children, sick and disabled people, the unemployed and poor (pensioners).

“I simply don’t believe that most people in this House, or this country, think they are the people who ought to be paying the price for the fallout from the Government’s disastrous budget, so will the minister please tell the House they are seriously not proposing to do that.”

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Work and pensions minister Lord Davies of Gower responded: “The secretary of state is required to review the rates of state pension and benefits every year.

“The secretary will announce the outcome of her review to this House by 25 November in the normal way.

“The Government has committed to the triple lock for the remainder of this parliament. It would not be right for me to pre-judge the outcome of that review when the ONS (Office for National Statistics) has yet to publish the relevant indices.”

Baroness Boycott, crossbench peer and chair of charity Feeding Britain, warned: “Over the last few weeks we have found that the food in our food banks and social supermarkets, we’ve actually now been running out in 20 minutes.”

Fellow crossbench peer Lord Kerr of Kinlochard argued the Government “seem to be more concerned to grow the cake than to slice it fairly”.

He said: “Does the minister agree that sustainable growth requires social stability, and that therefore to break the Johnson promise on welfare uprating at a time of acute cost-of-living crisis would be as bad economics as it would be bad politics?”