SNP Budget call: Scrap the cap and uprate benefits to meet rising cost of living

The SNP has issued a challenge to the UK Government ahead of the Budget, urging the Tories to scrap the unfair benefit cap and uprate benefits in line with the cost of living.

The party warned families were being left to languish in poverty under the Tories' restrictive welfare policies, creating an unnecessary burden on households throughout the cost of living crisis.

Recent analysis from the Child Poverty Action Group revealed the 'fallacy' of the benefit cap being a work-incentive, finding more than half of those seeing their benefits restricted are exempt from having to find work due to a number of reasons such as child caring responsibilities.

As a result, tens of thousands of households are seeing their benefits capped at a rate that doesn't meet rising costs, with energy bills, mortgage rates, and grocery inflation all soaring.

Commenting, the SNP's Social Justice spokesperson, David Linden MP said:

"This Budget comes at a time of real difficulty for families, made even worse by the unfair benefit cap and restrictively low benefits. The Tories must scrap the cap and uprate benefits to meet the cost of living.

"The UK government's policies have failed completely and serve only now to add an unnecessary additional burden on families already struggling through the Tory-made cost of living crisis.

"For too long households have been made to suffer as the Tories' ideological austerity obsession has trapped them in severe poverty and deprivation.

"The welfare system should be a safety net that exists only to support vulnerable people and empower those able to work back into meaningful, well paid employment. At present it does nothing but keep impoverished households in a vicious cycle of destitution.

"The question the UK government must answer at the Budget is whether they'll take stock of the evidence pointing to their failures, scrap the cap and uprate benefits, or whether their policies only exist as some callous form of punishment.

"We already know the answer though - under the Tories in the broken Westminster system we will never see real meaningful support for those who need it most, showing exactly why we need the full powers of independence for Scotland."