Charities issue warning over plans to strip health welfare benefits
- Plans to strip health welfare benefits from individuals under the age of 22 threaten to push vulnerable young people into poverty, campaigners have warned.
- A coalition of numerous charities has written to ministers and the author leading a youth unemployment review, saying that while change “is needed”, it “must be built around the principles of support and opportunity, rather than the failed punitive approaches of the past”.
- Research by Scope estimates that 94 per cent of households with a person under 22 claiming the universal credit health element would be in poverty if the support was removed.
- A government spokesperson said: “We are pushing ahead with the biggest youth employment reforms in a generation to create almost a million opportunities for young people and our wider £2.5 billion youth employment support package includes a new apprenticeship bursary for families on universal credit.”
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