Benefits to plunge to 50-year-low as expert warns of ‘civil unrest’

Benefits in the UK will plunge to their lowest value in 50 years, stated anti-poverty campaigners today (11), as Britons grapple with the worst cost of living crisis since 1972 amid rising food and fuel costs and warnings of civil unrest.

Despite everyday prices rising as much as 8 percent and gas and electricity bills almost doubling to £2,000 a year, the state pension and most other state benefits will rise by 3.1 percent today.

Charities, Labour and others have called on the chancellor Rishi Sunak to do more to help those on middle and low incomes get through the crisis.

So far ministers have resisted calls to restore the £20-a-week uplift to universal credit that was introduced during the pandemic.

Ministers announced in November that the state pension, universal credit and a host of other benefits would rise by 3.1 percent, implying basic state pension rising by £4.25 to £141.85 per week, while the full new state pension will rise by £5.55 to £185.15. The figure was calculated according to the consumer price index (CPI) for the year up to September 2021 though prices of most essentials have rocketed in the following months amid supply chain crisis and crunch in basic food supply owing to Ukraine-Russia conflict.

Meanwhile, the money-saving expert Martin Lewis has said that the UK could experience “civil unrest” later this year if the government fails to take decisive action.

“We need to keep people fed. We need to keep them warm. If we get this wrong right now, then we get to the point where we start to risk civil unrest,” Lewis said in an interview with Sunday Telegraph.

“When breadwinners cannot provide, anger brews and civil unrest brews – and I do not think we are very far off. 

“I get all these messages from people tearing their hair out. They don’t know how to make things add up.”

A further rise for the energy cap is expected in October. It is thought that inflation could reach 8.4 percent this year, according to an economic outlook report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, while Lewis said he thinks real inflation could even go as high as 12 percent.