On a sunny day last week in the seaside resort of Bridlington, dozens of families gathered on the sand. For many of the children, whose families rely on Universal Credit, it was their first ever view of the sea.
They were using their buckets and spades not to build sandcastles but to create a giant sand sculpture, with the words “Cancel The Cut”.
Katy Howard, 30, was with daughter Casi-Rose, eight, and other members of Unite Community to protest the £20 cut to Universal Credit that is about to plunge millions into poverty.
“The last week before my payment I’m always struggling, that’s with the extra money, so what’s it going to be like without?” Katy said, as the sculpture washed away with the tide.
“I’ll have to choose whether to be warm or to eat.”
Her 65-year-old dad, Stephen, laid off as a driver during the pandemic, was on UC too.
He is often left with just 37p after paying his bills, Katy, from near Bridlington, East Yorkshire, told us.
“There are days he has to choose between putting milk in his tea and having some electricity.”
The £90 a month cut to Universal Credit – the end of a pandemic uplift to the benefit – is the biggest overnight cut to the basic rate of social security since the Second World War.
Just as families are facing a fuel price hike and back-to-school costs, the poorest are yet again being used to balance the books.
Yesterday, a group of 100 organisations led by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation wrote to Boris Johnson warning it will cause “immense, immediate and avoidable” hardship.
The move is opposed by six former Work and Pensions secretaries, while analysis from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows it risks plunging 500,000 people into poverty, including 200,000 children.
Yet this week, Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey confirmed it will come in from the end of September.
“Now the economy has reopened it is right that the Government should focus on supporting people back into work and supporting those already employed to progress in their careers,” she said.
“Our ambition is to support two million people to move into and progress in work through our comprehensive £33billion Plan for Jobs.”
Childminder Caroline Rice is already in work – but as with around 40% of people claiming Universal Credit, she relies on the benefit to top up her low income.
Like millions who began needing support during Covid-19, Caroline has only ever known UC with its £20 uplift.
“I don’t know how I will manage with the £20 a week taken away,” she says. “That’s nearly £90 every payment term. We’ve cut all our outgoings as much as we can and I’ve got to the point where we can’t cut any more. We just barely get by every month.”
Caroline, 48, from Fermanagh in Northern Ireland, the Unite Registered Childminders branch secretary, began claiming UC when her income dropped during the pandemic due to falling demand for childminders.
“I need my car for work,” she says. “I can’t stop paying my rent or stop eating. We’ve already cut our TV licence. The debts that I already have are never going to be paid and it’s just going to grow.”
Kerry Wilks, 39, from Middlesbrough, also has a sense of creeping dread. She has three children, aged 15, 13 and eight, and has been struggling since her partner’s sudden death 12 years ago.
“The extra meant I’ve been able to survive,” she says. “I used food banks in the past, but I’ve been OK with this. I’ll be back to square one, robbing Peter to pay Paul. It’s the difference between being able to pay for some gas for the week. I won’t be able to pay bills. I’m full of dread, completely terrified.”
Anthony Lyman, 35, an autistic father of two living in Northampton, and a former assistant for kids with special educational needs, also says he feels terrified.
“When the uplift came it just went on keeping up with the new essential bills.
“To some people £20 is just a few drinks or a takeaway but for me it’s about surviving. It has never been spent on anything fancy – it’s been spent on the cost of lockdown.
“We already use the food bank, we visit a local church for a food hall. My finances are on a knife edge. I haven’t gone out for a drink for years.
“I didn’t plan to be where I am and there are millions of other people in the same position – not thousands, millions. We’re going to go from a pandemic to an epidemic of mental health issues and debt.”
Meanwhile, Maria Smith, 39, a disabled mum who lives in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, with her daughters, Sofia, nine, and Jessica, 15, says she has mainly spent the £20 extra on the specialist food her daughter needs.
“Myself and my daughter have to attend a lot of specialist appointments and the travel expenses can all add up,” she says.
“In the past I’ve really struggled but the extra money meant I could do a shop every week. This is going to have an awful impact on a lot of people.”
Ms Coffey’s announcement was hardly helped by news that Chancellor Rishi Sunak has been granted permission to build a new gym, swimming pool and tennis court at his Grade II listed constituency home.
As Unite’s Heather Blakey says: “Twenty pounds may not seem a lot to the multimillionaire chancellor and his wealthy Tory colleagues. But for families across the UK, it is a lifeline that means the difference between scraping by and going without.”
The cut, she said, amounted to a “war on the poor”.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s Katie Schmuecker added: “People’s bills won’t get £80 a month cheaper, in fact energy prices are set to rise dramatically for many.
“Piling unnecessary financial pressure on families in and out of work who are already struggling to make ends meet flies in the face of the Government’s mission to level up.
“It’s not too late for ministers to do the right thing and keep this vital lifeline in place.”
A few weeks ago I spoke to the former UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston, who called the Universal Credit cut a “social calamity”.
His theory was that the £20 cut was being made because the Government believed Tory voters now were back in work.
“When Conservative voters were forced on to welfare, benefits were put up,” Alston said. “You don’t want your friends living on that pittance, they need a minimum level of decency. Now your people are back on track, you get back to the punitive message.”
Kerry Wilks puts it another way.
“It feels to me like the Government added the uplift so people who’d been furloughed or put out of work didn’t realise how bad Universal Credit was.”