Universal Credit payment cut 'completely unacceptable', says Gordon Brown

The cut in Universal Credit payments is “completely unacceptable”, Gordon Brown has said.

The former prime minister said the coming £20 cut would put millions of families further into poverty, though he said the UK Government must find a way to fund the NHS.

Speaking on Sky’s Trevor Phillips show on Sunday, Mr Brown said there appeared to be a divide between “small state” and “one nation” Conservatives on how to deal with the issue.

He said: “The health service has got to be funded.

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Picture: Jane Barlow/PA WireFormer Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Picture: Jane Barlow/PA Wire
Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Picture: Jane Barlow/PA Wire
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“We’ve got to get out of this pandemic by making sure that children are not in poverty.

“That’s why the cut in Universal Credit in a few weeks’ time is completely unacceptable, that puts six million families further into poverty.

“So, the government’s got to resolve this conflict, which didn’t exist 20 years ago, that clearly exists in this government between small state conservatives and one nation conservatives.”

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Mr Brown was also asked if he would consider raising national insurance contributions if he were prime minister today.

Boris Johnson’s Government is expected to announce a rise in national insurance contributions in order to pay for social care.

Mr Brown said: “We did the national insurance rise in 2002/3 and that paid for the health service to expand massively.

“I think 100,000 more nurses and 30,000 more doctors.

“I always said you’d have to come back to this 10 years on because you’ve got rising population pressures, rising elderly, technology is costing more – and of course the pandemic.”

He added: “National insurance must be one of the issues under consideration. But you’ve got to be thinking ‘how can we pay for this over the long term?'”

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Mr Brown separately said coronavirus would come back to haunt the west unless vaccination rates in Africa were improved.

He said hundreds of millions of doses are lying in warehouses in Europe and North America when they could be used in African countries.

Writing in the Sunday Mirror, he said there would be about 500 million unused vaccines by the end of October.

He said world leaders like Mr Johnson, Joe Biden, Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron should work to redirect vaccine supplies to those who need them most.

The former prime minister said: “Seventy per cent of the west has been vaccinated, only 2 per cent in Africa and the other low-income countries of the world. So, 98 per cent are unprotected.

“It’s bad for them, it’s bad for us, because the disease will come back to haunt us from Africa and hurt even the fully vaccinated here with new variants.”

He said western countries had enough supplies to vaccinate over-12s and carry out booster shot programmes as well as supply countries with low vaccination rates.

Calling for an urgent G7 meeting to address global vaccination, he said: “You’ll find African leaders will be demanding it too.

“Faith and church leaders know that this vaccine divide between vaccine-rich and vaccine-poor is really a terrible stain.

“It’s a moral failure on the part of the whole of the world.”

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