A TEXT message has been sent to Universal Credit claimants informing them of cuts to their benefits from next month.

It comes as the Conservatives continue with changes to the £20 per week uplift.

Opposition parties, charities and Tory MPs have called for the increase – introduced in April 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic – not to be scrapped, reports The Daily Record.

Experts have warned that removing the £20-a-week uplift could result in more people plunged into poverty, but some benefit claimants received text messages yesterday confirming the cut would go ahead.

Veteran anti-poverty campaigner Sean Clerkin, a recipient of Universal Credit, told the Record he was sickened by the text message.

"The message told me I had been receiving an extra £86.67p since April 2020, which was a temporary increase because of the coronavirus pandemic," he told the paper.

"It added the increase will end soon and my payment on September 17 would be the last time I received this amount.

"You couldn't make this stuff up. I phoned the DWP and they confirmed similar messages had been sent to millions of people.

"We have backbench Tory MPs campaigning for the £20 a week uplift to stay, yet the UK Government is ploughing on regardless and telling us via text message.

"This will create a perfect storm of poverty and social distress across Scotland and rest of the UK."

Scottish Labour social security spokeswoman Pam Duncan-Glancy told the paper: “What a shockingly heartless way to tell people that the support they rely on will be cut.

“You cannot announce a decision that could send thousands deeper into poverty via text message. This should go before the parliament, and every MP must find a conscience and vote to keep the uplift.

“Thousands of people are struggling to make ends meet and poverty is rising.

“Thousands of livelihoods are still on the line and our economy is still subject to restrictions and reeling from the impact of the pandemic.

"At this crucial moment, the government should be doing all it can to support people to stay afloat – not pulling the rug out from under them.

“The UK Government must reinstate the uplift and the Scottish Government must get a move on and use the social security powers that it has.”

It comes as a poll published yesterday found almost two-thirds of Scots support scrapping the £20 per week increase to Universal Credit.

The cash boost was introduced as part of the UK Government’s emergency package of Covid support measures, but Boris Johnson is refusing to make the rise permanent.

A YouGov poll for Citizens Advice Scotland found 35% of people supported keeping the extra £20 in place until the financial situation created by the pandemic “is more stable”.

More than a quarter of those surveyed, 28%, said the rise should be made permanent.

Around 11% said the financial boost should end in September, with another 10% saying the cut should be implemented sooner.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) announced last month that benefit claimants would be contacted about the end of the £20-a-week top up.

The department set out plans to contact six million claimants across the country to inform them of the uplift's removal at the end of September.

Therese Coffey, Work and Pensions Secretary, told MPs in July: “Ahead of October, we will start communicating with the current claimants who receive the £20 to make them aware that that will be being phased out.”