Families fear hunger and cold when universal credit is cut

More than a million people in the UK fear they will go hungry or be unable to heat their homes, if the government goes ahead with plans to scrap the £20 weekly uplift to universal credit, brought in at the start of the pandemic.

We’ve been to one borough, Barking and Dagenham, where it’s estimated that half of families with children are on universal credit. We went to a community centre already witnessing panic and spoke to residents who simply don’t know how they’ll manage if their financial lifeline is cut.