Under-fire MP Peter Bottomley's universal credit concern

Conservative MP Peter Bottomley says it would have been better to remove universal credit increases gradually rather than in one go.

The £20-a-week top up to the benefit officially ended on Wednesday, despite warnings about an "unbearable" squeeze on living standards.

Sir Peter has been under fire since he said MPs should be paid more.

He stands by the comments but told the BBC they were part of a broader interview with the New Statesman.

The 77-year-old Worthing West MP - the longest serving MP in the Commons - faced an angry backlash on social media for saying in the interview that some MPs were struggling to get by on an annual salary of just over £80,000.

Labour's shadow child poverty secretary Wes Streeting said he was "genuinely infuriated" by Sir Peter's comments.

"We are perfectly well paid, and unfortunately too many MPs on the Conservative side, at the same time as whingeing about very high - relatively high - levels of pay that MPs get in this country, at the same time they are clobbering people who are losing over £1,000 a year, which is 10% of their income in some cases," he told BBC Radio 5 Live.

He added: "This is my problem with the Tories - it's not that they're evil, bad people who go into work every day thinking 'How can we plunge more kids into poverty?'

"But, as Peter Bottomley's comments show, they just don't know what life is like for a hell of a lot of people in this country and they make policies that are actively hurting people who are going out, working hard, trying to make the best for their family and are really struggling."

Mr Bottomley told the BBC he was not arguing for MP pay rises until after the next general election "which is probably in three years' time".

He said he was trying to make the point that increasing MPs' salaries would make it easier to widen the pool of people interested in changing careers to become parliamentarians, without having to take a pay cut.

"If people can't switch across to being an MP, you're going to exclude a whole lot of people" he said, such as headteachers and public sector executives.

He said he also shared concerns expressed by other Tory MPs about the government's benefit cuts although he is not arguing for the universal credit uplift to be made permanent.

He "would have agreed to increase universal credit temporarily" as Chancellor Rishi Sunak did, he said, because it was a way to "support those hurt most by the pandemic".

But he expressed concern at the speed with which it has been removed and said it would have been better to taper the extra money down to "avoid cutting it off at a cliff-edge".

Conservative peer, Philippa Stroud, a former adviser to Iain Duncan Smith when he was work and pensions secretary, has threatened to force a vote on the universal credit cut in the House of Lords.

And speaking on the BBC News Channel, Shadow Business Secretary, Ed Miliband said Labour was "not giving up" on attempts to reverse the reduction.

"It beggars belief" he said ,that in the context of escalating energy prices and tax rises, "the government is ploughing ahead" with the cut to the benefit.

People are facing a "double whammy" and the situation is going to be "unbearable for so many families" he added and targeting support through the social security system is the best way to help them.