Benefit chiefs will start writing to millions of British families within weeks confirming their Universal Credit is being cut by £20 a week.
Six million claimants look set to get online messages, letters and phone calls as the Tories cruelly bin an £85-a-month Covid uplift at the end of September.
The news today came despite desperate pleas to make the 18-month boost permanent, including from charities, Labour, and dozens of Tory MPs.
It was also announced hours after state pensions were predicted to rise by 8% in April 2022 at an extra cost of £3bn.
Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey refused to say if she had lobbied the Treasury to cancel the £20-a-week cut - which a think tank has warned will plunge 400,000 children into relative poverty.
She told the Commons Work and Pensions Committee: “Ahead of October we will start communicating with the current claimants who receive the £20 to make them aware that that will be being phased out.
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"And they will start to see an adjustment in their payments.
"I think it really kicks in largely in October, but it will start to kick in I think towards late September for some people.”
Dozens of Conservatives on the Tory Reform Group and One Nation Caucus have warned withdrawing the £20-a-week would be a "mistake”.
And just days ago, six former Conservative work and pension secretaries urged the Chancellor to make the uplift permanent, warning that failing to do so would "damage living standards, health and opportunities" .
Conservative MP Nigel Mills told Ms Coffey: "It sounds like this is a 'dates not data' decision, that we've just chosen to end this at the end of September and not going to review that based on any data at all.
"'We'll just kind of assume it will all be OK' - that seems to be a pretty fair summary of what you're saying: 'We haven't got any data yet that you don't need this uplift, but we're going to take it away regardless because that's what we planned in the Budget'."
Torsten Bell, Chief Executive of the Resolution Foundation, said: “The decision to cut Universal Credit by £20 a week this October will cut the incomes of the poorest families by over 5% overnight.
“Taking a gamble with family finances and the strength of the recovery this Autumn is the wrong choice.”
But there was anger today as one Tory MP said many families don’t “need” the “handout”.
Andrew Rosindell - who bought a £289 TV for his constituency office on expenses last year - told BBC Politics Live: “I think this is a balance, it has to be judged very carefully, I think there are people that quite like getting the extra £20, but maybe they don’t need it.
“Because people are all different, different circumstances, so you can’t box everyone into the same category.
“The government has an overall responsibility to deal with the national finances as well and that’s what they must now do.”
He claimed “to have this blanket benefit uplifted permanently I don’t think is sustainable”, adding: “If someone is in desperate need and a family really need that support there should be a safety net, there should be flexibility in the system.
“What I’m against is government giving handouts - well, whatever you want to call it, to give benefits permanently to people without proper assessment as to whether they need that.”
Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Minister Karen Buck slammed the callous MP, saying: “£20 may not be much to a Conservative MP.
“But for millions of people on low incomes £20 a week is the difference between having food in the fridge at the end of the week or not."
He was also confronted on the BBC show by Labour MP Carolyn Harris, who said: “We’re taking £20 a week away from the people who can least afford to lose it.
“Nobody who’s on Universal Credit would be not in need of more money - what may be a cup of coffee and a nice slice of cake for some people, £20, is actually food for a week for other people.”
Universal Credit's standard allowance was raised from £318 to £410 a month for single people in April 2020 to help families through the pandemic.
After protests, the uplift was extended by six months to September - but the Treasury is refusing to extend it further.
That is despite ministers admitting they have made no assessment of how many children it will plunge into poverty.
Grilled by MPs, Ms Coffey admitted she was "not in any way assuming everything’s going to be okay" in October.
She insisted "we're not putting our heads in the sand", with work coaches doubling and a focus on the return to work.
But she admitted just over 40,000 young jobseekers have started on her flagship Kickstart work scheme - out of a hoped 250,000.
She said lockdowns had held back the scheme, saying: "I’m not going to pretend otherwise, I wish we’d had more starts."
DWP permanent secretary Peter Schofield admitted that while 230,000 jobs are being advertised, "I don’t think" they will all have people starting by December. He later insisted: "I'm absolutely determined to drive as close to it as I possibly can, if not exceed it".
This week the Office for Budget Responsibility watchdog predicted pensions could rise by 8% in April 2022.
Under the triple lock lock, pensions can rise by average earnings. But wages fell in spring 2020 due to lockdown, meaning they are now ‘artificially’ bouncing back this summer at 5.6% and are set to rise even further.
Tory MP Steve Baker told The Spectator: “If the loss of jobs among the low paid led to an extraordinary rise in pensions, that would be an absurd injustice, which Conservatives should be ashamed of.”
Former Tory Work and Pensions Secretary David Gauke, later an independent, told BBC Newsnight: ”I don't think it's justifiable to have an 8% increase.”
Meanwhile Ms Coffey confirmed she still "intends" to force all remaining legacy benefit claimants onto Universal Credit by December 2024, despite delays due to Covid.
"I will be holding my ministers and my officials to account very specifically," she said.
