People on State Pension, PIP or other benefits due new payment rates in full next month
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), Social Security Scotland and HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) applied the new payment rates for the 2025/26 financial year at the start of this month. Most people will receive a blend of old and new rates this month, as most benefits and the State Pension are paid in arrears. This means people can expect to receive their first payment with the full amount of the new uprating amount next month. Universal Credit is slightly different as assessment period runs from month-to-month on a specific date which means the uprated amount may not arrive until the next payment cycle in May or June. People on the State Pension who receive payments weekly will have received the full uplift sooner. Some members of the Daily Record Money Saving Scotland Facebook Group have reported they are still waiting on the DWP annual uprating letter. It's important to be aware this does not affect the uprating as the payments increase automatically. People in Scotland on devolved benefits received their letters, or an email, last month. You can view the new payment rates from Social Security Scotland here. For those not sure how much to expect in their first full payment, below is a list of all the benefit payment rates for the 2025/26 financial year. Weekly rates are shown, unless otherwise stated and have been listed in alphabetical order to make it easier to find the payment relevant to your own situation. Care Component Mobility component Full details on amounts for mixed age households and premiums can be found on GOV.UK here. Short-term Incapacity Benefit (under State Pension age) Short-term Incapacity Benefit (over State Pension age) Increase of Long-term Incapacity Benefit for age Full details on additional premiums by age and household circumstances can be found on GOV.UK here. Contribution based JSA Income-based JSA Lone parent Full details on amounts for mixed age households and premiums can be found on GOV.UK here. Standard minimum guarantee Additional amount for severe disability Daily Living Component Mobility Component New State Pension Old/Basic State Pension Full details on Additional State Pension, Widows Pension, increments and Invalidity Allowance can be found on GOV.UK here. Single Couples A full list of additional elements related to Universal Credit, including the Work Capability Allowance, can be found on GOV.UK here. HMRC has also confirmed the new payment rates for Child Benefit and Guardian's Allowance. Tax Credits are ending on April 5, 2025 so there are no payment changes.
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Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Rachel Reeves is about to do more damage to pensions than Gordon Brown
When in 1997, Gordon Brown raided pension funds by removing their tax credit on dividends, it was arguably the most egregious blunder of economic self-harm by any chancellor in history. At that time, pension funds and institutional investors owned almost half of the UK's quoted shares. Now it is only 4pc. To most people, it seemed innocuous and may only have raised around £5bn at the time, but it did more than reduce income for pensioners – more importantly it meant the compounded earnings from reinvested dividends never happened. The cumulative cost has been estimated at £250bn to pension funds over the next 20 years. Now in 2025, we have a Chancellor who is doing her best to be more damaging to pensions than Brown – and with Labour's huge majority she has every chance of doing so. Reeves's first move of her four-step barn dance was to make private pensions subject to inheritance tax. That means in some estates the total tax deducted from a pension could be 72pc for basic-rate taxpayers, 84pc for higher-rate and 87pc for additional-rate payers. The next step Reeves is believed to be considering is to remove any tax incentives that encourage salary sacrifice into pensions. An HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) report has already laid the ground for this move which could cost an extra £500 a year on the average earner's tax bill and reduce the size of their pension pot. That's still not enough to satisfy Reeves's appetite for meddling, next comes asserting state control over where pensions are invested, believing, as she and her comrades do, that the state can pick winners. Although please understand, the intention is not to reward pensions with successful returns but to use pension funds to provide investment in Labour's favoured industries without having to raise taxes further or borrow at high rates in the markets. It is essentially a way of subsidising risky government interventions in the economy. We can see pension funds already seeking to please the Government with Torsten Bell, the pensions minister, congratulating one company for committing 15pc of its investments towards government targets, including 5pc on renewables. This is not Viagra to boost the economy, it's Valium to stupefy it. Finally, Reeves is looking at companies with defined benefit schemes being allowed to spend the surplus. Why? So she can then tax any drawdown by 25pc, of course. The collective impact of these changes, even if they do not happen all at once, will be to make all pensioners poorer through lower returns. People will be discouraged from saving through pension funds for their retirement and find other means of investing – all causing British pension funds and the highly complex superstructure of expertise, services jobs and physical support behind the pension industry to waste away like it is being eaten by a cancer. Instead of making UK equities more attractive, it will hasten their decline because they will no longer be bidding for support in a competitive market. Performance will become less important than geographical location or state favouritism. It is a recipe for disaster that will work its way through our private sector like a monstrous tapeworm. It doesn't have to be this way. The alternative that should have been grasped when the Conservatives won (with Liberal Democrat support) in 2010 will still be available to the next government. Whoever has that task should aim to encourage (never force) greater saving into pensions by providing a more stable and secure pension system for future retirees. Yes, it would be brilliant if a greater percentage of pension funds invested in the UK – but it should be because our private sector becomes world-beating and offers attractive returns, not because of a ministerial Wizard of Oz pulling the wrong lever behind a green velvet curtain. A new chancellor should first reverse Reeves's death tax assault on pensions, making pension investment attractive again. By encouraging private provision for our futures, the state gains from a more dynamic economy (raising tax revenues) but also benefits from lower welfare costs in the future. Next – and this is crucial – the UK should restore the dividend tax credits for pension funds that were abolished by Gordon Brown. For a cost of just a few hundred million pounds, this step will encourage retirement schemes to increase substantially the amounts they allocate to UK equities. It is relatively inexpensive to do because Brown's policy so damaged the pension industry's UK investments it will not cost the £5bn it raised in 1997. Then scrap stamp duty on shares. This 0.5pc charge on every transaction on British capital markets depresses both share values and investment into UK equities. It is a long-overdue reform only held back by outdated class war prejudices. Finally, the country has to face up to the dire need to leave behind our unfunded state pension Ponzi scheme (where current taxes pay today's pensions in the fingers-crossed hope that future taxes will pay future pensions – thus requiring constant mass immigration to outpace the nation's demographic challenges). We need a funded pension system that actually invests in real assets so future generations have pension pots they can rely upon. The British people get a very poor implied rate of return on what they pay into National Insurance. Evidence shows they would be three times better off putting the same money as their National Insurance contributions (NICs) in a private pension fund. Money put into Britain's pay-as-you-go state system is paid out straight away in current benefits. Over the years, those benefits can grow only as fast as the NICs that finance them – roughly the annual growth of real earnings – but this has been negligible in recent years. ONS data for 2024 indicated median weekly pay for full-time employees in the UK was 2pc lower in real terms compared to 2010. By contrast, the real rate of return on invested funds is more than 5pc. Indeed, from 1900 to 2021, UK equities delivered an average annual real return of approximately 5.4pc, while over the same period, global equities achieved around 5.3pc in real annual returns. This difference between state and private systems, compounded over a 40-year working life, means the average worker's NICs would have to be six times higher than the sum required to buy the same benefits privately. A phased change would be required and one-way of helping finance the transition is to tackle the absurdly generous and costly system of public sector pensions – but that story is for another day. Reeves is on a mission; she needs desperately to fund the pepper-pot of black holes she has created in the public finances. By raiding our pensions and decimating the sector with taxes, she will only generate fast-diminishing returns as her scorched-earth policies kill our private sector that generates wealth.
The National
2 hours ago
- The National
2 million families 'lifted out of poverty if UK followed Scotland'
The SNP asked the House of Commons Library to produce an independent analysis of the number of children in the UK living in poverty, and the impact replicating Holyrood policies across the country would have. It comes ahead of Rachel Reeves's spending review on Wednesday. The UK Government has been warned that the impact of impending welfare cuts are likely to push tens of thousands more people into poverty than previously predicted. The research showed 1.83 million families would be lifted out of poverty if policies were matched, including abolishing the two-child benefit cap, scrapping the bedroom tax and raising the child element of Universal Credit to match the Scottish child payment, according to the SNP. READ MORE: Scottish independence 'already begun as UK political culture diverges' Statistics showed a third of British children were anticipated to be living in poverty by 2029-30 unless action was taken. Prime Minister Keir Starmer was urged to act on the figures ahead of the UK spending review on Wednesday amid warnings the number of children in the UK living in poverty is expected to rise to a record 4.6 million by 2029-30. Over the past decade, the number of children living in poverty has risen from 3.7m (27%) in 2013/14 to 4.5m (31%) in 2023/24, the SNP research said. The SNP said Scotland is the only part of the UK where child poverty is falling, due to 'bold' policies such as the Scottish child payment of £27.15 per child, per week, paid in addition to other benefits. Replicating it UK-wide, by raising the child element of Universal Credit by the same amount, would lift 732,000 families out of poverty, including a further 38,000 families in Scotland, analysis showed. (Image: Ian West/PA Wire) The SNP said it has also mitigated the bedroom tax and is in the process of ending the two-child benefit cap in Scotland. It said replicating the policies would lift a further 609,000 British families out of poverty, with the combined impact of introducing all three policies lifting 1.83m families out of poverty, including a further 75,000 in Scotland. The UK Government delayed its child poverty taskforce review to the autumn and last year Labour MPs voted against abolishing the two-child benefit cap, in a motion tabled by the SNP. The Chancellor has previously rejected proposals to abolish the bedroom tax. The SNP said the UK Government's own impact analysis showed planned cuts to disability benefits will push 250,000 more people into poverty, including 50,000 children, with families losing out on £4500 a year on average as a result of the cuts, branding it 'shameful'. READ MORE: Furious Anas Sarwar clashes with BBC journalist over Labour policies Kirsty Blackman MP, SNP work and pensions spokesperson, said: 'The evidence shows Keir Starmer's Labour Government is keeping almost two million families in poverty by failing to match SNP action across the UK. 'It's shameful that UK child poverty is rising to record levels under the Labour Government, which has pushed thousands more children into deprivation by imposing punitive welfare cuts. 'It's vital that the Prime Minister finally listens to families struggling with the soaring cost of living – and takes the long-overdue action needed to end child poverty at the UK spending review this week. 'That means abandoning the devastating austerity cuts to disabled families, matching the Scottish child payment UK-wide, abolishing the bedroom tax and scrapping the two-child limit and benefit cap. 'With 4.5 million children living in poverty in the UK, only bold and immediate action will do. READ MORE: The whole world is watching the Madleen's journey to Gaza on social media 'The two-child benefit cap and bedroom tax must be abolished immediately, but that alone isn't enough to end child poverty. It's vital the Labour Government matches the Scottish child payment by raising the child element of Universal Credit across the UK. 'Scotland is the only part of the UK where child poverty is falling – and families receive the best cost-of-living help of anywhere in the UK. 'Westminster must match this action – or it will leave millions more children languishing in poverty.' A UK Government spokesperson said: 'We are determined to bring down child poverty and we have already expanded free breakfast clubs, increased the national minimum wage for those on the lowest incomes, uprated benefits in April and supported 700,000 of the poorest families by introducing a fair repayment rate on universal credit deductions. 'We will also publish an ambitious child poverty strategy later this year to ensure we deliver fully funded measures that tackle the structural and root causes of child poverty across the country.' It comes as major foodbank charity Trussell said 340,000 more people in disabled households could face hunger and hardship by the end of the decade if the UK Government does not reassess its planned welfare cuts.
Powys County Times
2 hours ago
- Powys County Times
SNP calls on Labour to match Scottish Government action on poverty
Almost two million families would be lifted out of poverty if Labour matched Scottish Government action on the issue, the SNP has claimed. Ahead of the UK spending review, the SNP asked the House of Commons Library to produce an independent analysis on the number of British children in poverty and the impact that replicating Scottish Government policies across the UK would have. The research showed 1.83 million families would be lifted out of poverty if policies were matched, including abolishing the two-child benefit cap, scrapping the bedroom tax and raising the child element of Universal Credit to match the Scottish child payment, according to the SNP. Statistics showed a third of British children were anticipated to be living in poverty by 2029-30 unless action was taken. Sir Keir Starmer was urged to act on the figures ahead of the UK spending review on Wednesday amid warnings the number of British children living in poverty is expected to rise to a record 4.6 million by 2029-30. Over the past decade, the number of children living in poverty has risen from 3.7 million (27%) in 2013/14 to 4.5 million (31%) in 2023/24, the SNP said. The SNP said Scotland is the only part of the UK where child poverty is falling, due to 'bold' policies such as the Scottish child payment of £27.15 per child, per week, paid in addition to other benefits. Replicating it UK-wide, by raising the child element of Universal Credit by the same amount, would lift 732,000 families out of poverty, including a further 38,000 families in Scotland, analysis showed. The SNP said it has also mitigated the bedroom tax and is in the process of ending the two-child benefit cap in Scotland. It said replicating the policies would lift a further 609,000 British families out of poverty, with the combined impact of introducing all three policies lifting 1.83 million families out of poverty, including a further 75,000 in Scotland. The UK Government delayed its child poverty taskforce review to the autumn and last year Labour MPs voted against abolishing the two-child benefit cap, in a motion tabled by the SNP. The Chancellor has previously rejected proposals to abolish the bedroom tax. The SNP said the UK Government's own impact analysis showed planned cuts to disability benefits will push 250,000 more people into poverty, including 50,000 children, with families losing out on £4,500 a year on average as a result of the cuts, branding it 'shameful'. SNP work and pensions spokeswoman Kirsty Blackman MP said: 'The evidence shows Keir Starmer's Labour Government is keeping almost two million families in poverty by failing to match SNP action across the UK. 'It's shameful that UK child poverty is rising to record levels under the Labour Government, which has pushed thousands more children into deprivation by imposing punitive welfare cuts. 'It's vital that the Prime Minister finally listens to families struggling with the soaring cost of living – and takes the long-overdue action needed to end child poverty at the UK spending review this week. 'That means abandoning the devastating austerity cuts to disabled families, matching the Scottish child payment UK-wide, abolishing the bedroom tax and scrapping the two-child limit and benefit cap. 'With 4.5 million children living in poverty in the UK, only bold and immediate action will do. 'The two-child benefit cap and bedroom tax must be abolished immediately, but that alone isn't enough to end child poverty. It's vital the Labour Government matches the Scottish child payment by raising the child element of Universal Credit across the UK. 'Scotland is the only part of the UK where child poverty is falling – and families receive the best cost-of-living help of anywhere in the UK. 'Westminster must match this action – or it will leave millions more children languishing in poverty.' A UK Government spokesperson said: 'We are determined to bring down child poverty and we have already expanded free breakfast clubs, increased the national minimum wage for those on the lowest incomes, uprated benefits in April and supported 700,000 of the poorest families by introducing a fair repayment rate on universal credit deductions. 'We will also publish an ambitious child poverty strategy later this year to ensure we deliver fully funded measures that tackle the structural and root causes of child poverty across the country.'
