The Universal Credit Uplift. Easy in, but not easy out.

There may some ingenious halfway house solution. But it is hard to say how extending it for another year can be avoided.

Mubin Haq: How can it be right for the Government to harm your business, leave you in need – and not help you?

We found over a million people excluded from the Government schemes are struggling to pay for food and everyday essentials.

Time for a Coffey break

The recent bias in Downing Street against putting the Work and Pensions Secretary up for press conferences and big media shows is inexplicable.

Frank Young: Today’s Commons debates, why measuring relative poverty doesn’t work – and what Ministers should do instead

The Prime Minster could do worse than dust down the Social Justice Outcomes Framework published by the Coalition Government.

Will Quince: While we get help to people in need, Starmer calls for some of it to be scrapped – with no replacement plan

Labour would abolish Universal Credit, which has coped well with the unprecedented pressures of this unprecedented last year.

Esther McVey: We should honour our manifesto commitment to close the digital divide. Especially during this time of Covid.

The levelling up agenda depends upon nation-wide digital inclusivity. If we give up on this, we will be trying to deliver it with one hand held behind our back.

Sunak opts to suck it and see

The OBR’s horrid forecasts of an output implosion and soaring unemployment will do nothing to quell Tory resistance to tougher Covid tiers.

Ryan Bourne: Calm down, stay cool – and drop this talk of tax rises. It’s too early to know how everything will settle down.

It’s baffling why think-tanks are taking the OBR assessments as truth, given its prediction record.

Frank Young: Educational Long Covid. Why the collapse of schooling over lockdown will haunt the poor for years to come.

The second in our mini-series of pieces from the Centre for Social Justice on the virus – and helping those in deep poverty.

Philippa Stroud: The Coalition stopped officially measuring poverty – which left its successor unsighted over free schools meals

We are allowing others to create a narrative for us, and in the absence of an agreed poverty measure and subsequent strategy, we always will.

Ryan Bourne: If you want to feed hungry children, don’t target food poverty. Aim to reduce poverty as a whole.

Together with tax cuts and less regulation, higher or more extensive benefits look like better support for hungry children than vouchers.

How to ensure that disadvantaged children are fed when schools are closed

Ministers could not have handled the matter worse if they’d tried. But Paul Maynard, pictured, is championing a solution.

David Willetts: The Government is wrong to propose cutting back on Universal Credit while the triple lock remains untouched

And when it comes to paying for the crisis measures, as we must, taxes must not fall on younger workers.

Robert Halfon: Delivering social justice means feeding children properly. We’re not doing so – and we must.

The Government’s own calculations of welfare payments do not cost in the provision of a healthy diet.

Bella Wallersteiner: Let the young work, play and be free of the rule of six – while older people learn to live with the virus

It is about time we had an honest conversation about segmenting the population, with more targeted protection for the elderly and vulnerable.