I appeared on the Sunday Politics North East programme. In addition to Brexit, one of the main topics we discussed was the Government’s botched rollout of Universal Credit. The number of people claiming the new benefit has continued to rise in the North East above the national average, the total is now above 80,000. This concerns me because the UK’s largest food bank network (The Trussell Trust) reported that food bank referral rates in areas where the full universal credit rollout has taken place are more than twice as high as the national average. The Labour Party is calling on the Tories to urgently stop the roll out of Universal Credit and fix the many problems that are having devastating impacts upon peoples’ lives.