Will the Universal Credit uplift be made permanent?

Chancellor under growing pressure to continue £20-a-week hike beyond scheduled October cut-off

Iain Duncan Smith
Former Conservative work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith
(Image credit: Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Iain Duncan Smith has teamed up with his five successors as Tory work and pension secretaries to call for a “vital” £20-a-week uplift in Universal Credit to be made permanent.

Former party leader Duncan Smith says that he and his fellow ex-welfare chiefs - Stephen Crabb, Damian Green, David Gauke, Esther McVey and Amber Rudd - have sent Rishi Sunak a letter “written with one voice” urging the chancellor to continue the emergency measure.

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 Sorcha Bradley is a writer at The Week and a regular on “The Week Unwrapped” podcast. She worked at The Week magazine for a year and a half before taking up her current role with the digital team, where she mostly covers UK current affairs and politics. Before joining The Week, Sorcha worked at slow-news start-up Tortoise Media. She has also written for Sky News, The Sunday Times, the London Evening Standard and Grazia magazine, among other publications. She has a master’s in newspaper journalism from City, University of London, where she specialised in political journalism.