Today’s announcement suggests the majority of cuts to Universal Credit will remain in place, hurting working people.

Today the Chancellor will announce that the Universal Credit taper rate will be reduced from 65 per cent to 63 per cent.
This suggests that deep and damaging cuts to Universal Credit will still go ahead, potentially leaving millions of families worse off.  
‎Such a reduction in the taper still leaves people in low paid work worse off, and does not offset the negative effects on incomes of lower work allowances and other cuts to Universal Credit in the pipeline.
63 per cent is also still much higher than the original taper rate of 55 per cent.

The Resolution Foundation estimate that a reduction in the rate of taper would need to go much further, to 35 per cent, to reverse the full impacts of cuts to Universal Credit.

John McDonnell MP, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor, commenting:

“It would appear that this Autumn Statement is set to fail our first test to provide actual support for those on low and middle incomes.

“If as reported, all the Chancellor is offering is a 2 per cent change in the taper rate, then it will be too little, too late for those working families who have had to bear the brunt of six wasted years of failed Tory economic policies.

“Despite all their rhetoric last month, and before the ink is even dry on the Autumn Statement, it looks like it will be jam tomorrow for working people under Theresa May and Philip Hammond.”