Out of touch, Tory says £20 Universal Credit ‘handout’ must end as some people ‘don’t need it’

Andrew Rosindell sparked a backlash from Labour Shadow Work and Pensions Minister Karen Buck after he said ‘I think there are people that quite like getting the extra £20, but maybe they don’t need it’

A Tory MP has been slammed for saying Universal Credit should be slashed by £20 a week because some people “don’t need it”.

Rosindell stated some of Britain’s 6million claimants “quite like” getting the Covid uplift since April 2020.

But despite people having to be on low incomes, sick, disabled or jobless to claim UC, he said it should not be a “handout” for all claimants.

The MP told BBC Politics Live: “I’m very sceptical of blanket benefits like this, I think it should be targeted at people in genuine need.”

Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Minister Karen Buck slammed the callous MP, saying: “£20 may not be much to a Conservative MP.

“But for millions of people on low incomes £20 a week is the difference between having food in the fridge at the end of the week or not.”

Andrew Rosindell said: “What I’m against is government giving handouts – well, whatever you want to call it, to give benefits permanently to people without proper assessment as to whether they need that.”

It seems it’s only public money going to the public he’s against.

We searched Hansard and all the public records we could find but could not find any Andrew Rosindell quote or statement relating to the millions in public handouts via this Tory government to friends or supporters and Party donors in its ongoing policy of cronyism.

However, we did find this post by the Daily politics from Wikipedia on Andrew Rosindell‘s Parliamentary expenses:

Hand Outs –

“I think there are people that quite like getting the extra £20 but maybe they don’t need it” says Conservative MP Andrew Rosindell on the temporary universal credit rise. He went on to call the benefit a “hand out” saying he was sceptical of blanket benefits.
In the year to Jan 2021, Rosindell claimed £187K in expenses.

In 2009 at the start of the expenses scandal, The Torygraph reported that Rosindell “claimed more than £125,000 in second home expenses for a flat in London, while designating his childhood home 17 miles away – where his mother lived – as his main address” and between “2006 and 2008 claimed the maximum £400 a month for food”

Nobody who’s on Universal Credit would be not in need of more money

Rosindell was also confronted on the BBC show by Labour MP Carolyn Harris, who said: “We’re taking £20 a week away from the people who can least afford to lose it.

“Nobody who’s on Universal Credit would be not in need of more money – what may be a cup of coffee and a nice slice of cake for some people, £20, is actually food for a week for other people.”

He spoke as it emerged DWP benefit chiefs will start writing to millions of families within weeks confirming their Universal Credit is being cut by £20 a week.

Six million claimants look set to get the messages as the Tories bin an £85-a-month Covid uplift at the end of September.

The news comes despite desperate pleas, including from dozens of Tory MPs

Welfare claimants will start being told through online statements and journals, as well as phone calls and letters that the 18-month-long Covid uplift is coming to an end.

Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey today refused to say if she had lobbied the Treasury to cancel the £20-a-week cut – which a think tank has warned will plunge 400,000 children into relative poverty.