UK welfare claims surge 1.8 milllion - six times pre-lockdown levels

Reuters
Mon, 04 May 2020 12:00 UTC

File photo: UK's Job Centre Plus

The British government received 1.8 million claims for welfare payments between March 16 and the end of April via its 'Universal Credit' benefits system, work and pensions minister Therese Coffey said on Monday.

Universal Credit benefits are paid to people in work as well as those who have lost their jobs.

Coffey said that overall, the volume of welfare claims had been six times bigger than pre-coronavirus during that period, and that in one particular week the increase had been tenfold.

Comment: The numbers will likely soar even higher once the lockdown is 'eased' and people who were 'furloughed' are forced to finally face the reality that their job no longer exists because the economy, dealt the final death blow by the lockdown, can no longer support it. Those who begged the government for the lockdown, believing the media hysteria over a pandemic that never was, are likely to be quite disgruntled, indeed.

The UK's benefit system has been exposed by endless scandals in the last decade for failing to deliver what it is funded by the taxpayer to do, all the while, aided by shady MPs, it deflected blame on to the people who depend on it. In the past much of the British public were quick to scorn those who found themselves on welfare however with those numbers rising the true nature of the system will be revealed to a great many more and they will begin to see the true nature of what is a callous and corrupt system.

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