Danny Kruger, the Conservative MP for Devizes, responded to these calls, acknowledging there were issues with legacy benefits but the government’s stance was the right one: “The Right Honourable gentleman raised the suggestion for his Select Committee in his report earlier this year that people should be able to go back to legacy benefits after being on Universal Credit.

“It’s certainly true that for some people, despite the significant increase in Universal Credit, they do appear to be worse off on Universal Credit.

“But as we see and as I’ve described, UC is a far more agile system.

“It’s intention is to replace legacy benefits and so I agree with the government’s position that it would not be right to let people go back.”