This Tory Government’s gross mishandling of the roll out of their flagship Universal Credit policy continued this week as the Secretary of State announced 10,000 more benefit claimants will be moved onto the new benefits system. Many of my constituents have already been forced into financial hardship and made destitute because of this shambolic policy, and many more face real difficulty if the migration onto Universal Credit continues.

On Tuesday, I asked Minister Alok Sharma to guarantee that new claimants and those being moved onto Universal Credit in Merseyside won’t be hit by the same financial hardship and destitution. As usual, he couldn’t give me that guarantee. All he would say was that the Government’s putting more money into delivering Universal Credit, adding yet more cost to the public purse for a disastrous policy that doesn’t work and causes real hardship for those affected by it.

On Friday Amber Rudd announced a “reset” of Universal Credit which amounted to a number of small, common sense changes to the policy which Labour MP’s have been calling for for some time. These changes also don’t help the millions of people already pushed into financial difficulty by Universal Credit or replace the £billions the Tories spent trying to fix it.

It’s high time the Tories faced up to reality and scrapped Universal Credit once and for all.