LONDON - British finance minister Rishi Sunak has proposed giving a one-off 500 pound grant to recipients of the country’s main unemployment and wage support benefit instead of extending a temporary increase on the welfare payments, The Times reported on Saturday.British welfare benefits for working-age adults are low compared with elsewhere in Europe, and the government temporarily increased them by 20 pounds per week last year at the start of the coronavirus pandemic as job openings dried up.
Sunak will announce future plans at an annual budget on March 3, where he will seek to rein in a budget deficit on track to hit 400 billion pounds, its highest as a share of the economy since World War Two. Separately, the Financial Times reported that Sunak would prefer to focus spending on job support measures, and the Daily Telegraph said Sunak’s allies believed he would be “very reluctant” to extend the increase to Universal Credit.
Then, Johnson told lawmakers he believed the British public “would rather see a focus on jobs and a growth in wages than focusing on welfare”.
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