Gary Neville and Edwina Currie clashed on Good Morning Britain on the topic of Universal Credit uplift being ended, after the former politican said it doesn’t “make any kind of sense” to pay people to stay at home.

Appearing on the programm, Currie made points about there being large numbers of vacancies available, with industries “desperate” for more workers.

During the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic the Government offered £20 weekly uplift payments on top of Universal Credit.

That is now ending, but with gas prices rising steeply and National Insurance contributions set to increase from next year there is worry that it will put a lot of pressure for those on benefits.

Currie said on the programme: “What we have to realise is that we’ve got something like a million vacancies being advertised in the country, we have record numbers of vacancies, we have whole industries desperate for more people to come into work from catering to the care industry, food processing.

“Businesses are absolutely desperate, and pushing up wages so it doesn’t make any kind of sense for us to pay people to stay home,” she added.

Presenter Susana Reid challenged Currie on this stating that 40 per cent of those on Universal Credit already had a job.

Currie responded to this arguing that it was still “the majority of people” on Universal Credit who do not have a job.

She added: “It’s wrong for us to be paying people to stay home, when the economy needs people to get into work and we need people to get into better jobs, and we need to push employers to pay them better and to look after their workforce better.”

Gary Neville make?

Former professional footballer Neville then made a retort to Currie’s arguments saying that her viewpoints are what Conservative MPs have been “entrenching in our minds” for a long time.

He said: “The first thing Edwina said was ‘That I’m okay here and we’re okay here’ which is the first thing that a Conservative person does, they look after themselves.

“The next thing that she said was ‘Go and get a job, get back to work you lazy sod, get off your backside’

“It’s the way this sort of language appears from Conservative ministers for so long: ‘Immigrants are taking our jobs, homeless people are all beggars on the street’, they’re basically alienating people.

“I work on the theory that people at home aren’t sitting there lazy, they really want a good job, they really want to get good pay, they want their mental health to be sorted and they’re not there sitting and thinking ‘Well tell you what I’m going to take the Chancellor’s money and live off nothing’.”

He finished off by saying that it was “brutal” for the Government to end Universal Credit uplift at this point in time.