LABOUR in government will scrap the “inhumane and unmitigated disaster” of the Tories’ flagship universal credit (UC) benefits scheme, Jeremy Corbyn will announce today.

The pledge goes further than the party’s previous policy, which was to halt the roll-out of UC across the country.

Mr Corbyn will be speaking at a rally in Chingford and Woodford Green with Labour candidate Faiza Shaheen, who wants to unseat former Conservative work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith.

Ms Shaheen, who is the director of the Centre for Labour and Social
Studies (Class) think tank, told the Star she is taking on “architect of chaos” Mr Duncan Smith whose changes to the welfare system led to suffering for her mother.

Her mother had been put through benefits reassessments despite doctors stating that she was unfit for work. She died of heart failure in 2017, which Ms Shaheen described as “heartbreaking to witness.”

She told the Star: “Universal credit has created a trail of destruction, plunging thousands of families into debt, causing evictions and driving people to foodbanks.

“It was supposed to simplify benefits but has ended up causing hunger and despair.”

Mr Duncan Smith has held the seat since it was created in 1997. However, his majority at the 2017 snap election was greatly reduced by Labour. 

In the 2015 election, he took 47.9 per cent of the vote while Labour’s Bilal Mahmood took 28.8 per cent.

Two years later, Mr Duncan Smith took 49.1 per cent of the vote while Mr Mahmood took 43.9 per cent.

At the rally at 11am on Chingford Mount, Mr Corbyn will set out Labour’s plans to replace UC with a social security system that focuses on “ending poverty, not driving people into it.”

Labour is pledging to end the benefit cap and the two child limit, which it says alone will lift up to 300,000 children out of poverty.

The party would also immediately suspend “the punitive sanctions regime” and end UC’s “digital only” requirement, which excludes people who cannot access the internet or are not computer literate.

Labour would also give claimants an “automatic interim payment” to end the five-week wait for money to enter their bank accounts.

Mr Corbyn says Labour would also switch monthly payments to fortnightly, pay housing benefit directly to landlords and protect women at risk of domestic violence and coercive abuse by making split payments by default.

And he vowed to scrap the requirement of women having to fill out a four-page form to “prove” their child was a born from an act of rape in order to claim benefit for a third child.

As well as scrapping UC, Labour will replace the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) with a Department for Social Security.

The party says that the rebranding would mark “a radical shift from a system that punishes and polices people” to one that would “support people in finding work and treat them with dignity and respect.”

Mr Corbyn is expected to say: “The universal credit system sums up the priorities of the Conservatives, who think they’re born to rule.

“A government of the wealthy cutting taxes for the super-rich while forcing people to rely on foodbanks to survive.

“The Tories told us that universal credit would make work pay, but we have seen the opposite.

“More and more people who are falling into poverty have jobs, and more and more children who are growing up in poverty are living in working families.”