JEREMY Corbyn is poised to announce plans to scrap Universal Credit if he gets into power.
Labour’s shadow cabinet have reportedly discussed tearing up the welfare reforms after their review found the policy is “toxic”.
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But critics blasted the plan, warning it would damage opportunities for Brits to get into work and send the welfare bill soaring.
Tory MP Iain Duncan Smith, the mastermind of UC, told The Sun Mr Corbyn’s plot would cost billions of pounds.
He fumed “Universal Credit is popular and it works. Only a Marxist Labour Party would disagree.
“Abolishing it would cost billions and cause utter chaos.”
‘UTTER CHAOS’
He added: “It is popular and it works. Otherwise why do we have so many people going back into work?
“Labour persists with this ludicrous idea they can come up with some kind of Nirvana.
“Universal Credit is a much better system than anything that came before it.”
UC brings together six welfare payments and tapers the amount of cash paid so claimants are not penalised and suddenly cut off if they find a job.
It has been hit by criticisms, and the six week wait for payments was reduced to five after a big campaign.
But Tory MPs warned that tearing up the system altogether will end up backfiring and saddling the country with an even bigger welfare bill.
Tory MP and ex Welfare Secretary Damian Green said: “If Labour will put [universal credit] at risk, they will be damaging the opportunities of people to get into work and move up the ladder, and that would be unbelievably stupid.”
Matthew Lesh, from the free-market Adam Smith Institute said: “There is always room for reform.
“But dismantling universal credit will cost billions, mean higher taxes, and undermine our record low unemployment.”
A Labour source told The Daily Mirror UC cannot be scrapped overnight.
But they added that there was “an absolute determination that Universal Credit will become history”.
