‘Ripping the Covid ‘uplift’ away just as fuel prices soar is downright cruel’

• ALAN Wheeler’s response (Publishing Ken Jones’s letter was a serious lapse of editorial judgment, September 23) to my letter about the inherent cruelty of the Tories (Cutting £20 off benefits is understandable if you look at the Tory mindset, September 16) was all outrage and no substance.

The policy of halting the Covid “uplift” was not conjured out of nowhere. It was thought through, with all its projected outcomes laid out before ministers.

The government is perfectly aware that benefit rates were the lowest of any equivalent welfare state in Europe, even before Covid, and set intentionally at poverty levels.

To allow people time to absorb the extra, niggardly, “uplift” for months and then rip it away just as fuel prices soar was typical of this bunch, that is, downright cruel.

KEN JONES, NW1