CHILDLESS couples in receipt of benefits or those whose children have left home will be denied a pay boost as a result of the Budget, analysis revealed today.

Under the universal credit scheme, parents of dependent children and people with disabilities will benefit from the new increase to the work allowance, the monthly amount that employees can earn before their benefits are affected.

Unison, which carried out the research, attacked the “underhand” decision to not increase the threshold for working couples without dependent children.

Their work allowance was £111 a month before April 2016, when it was cut to zero, which is where this week’s Budget left it.

Around two-thirds of current universal credit claimants needing the housing benefit element of the scheme will be affected, the union added, meaning that they will gain very little from next April’s rise in the minimum wage from £7.83 an hour to £8.21.

Nearly their entire annual pay rise – now worth more than £3,000 a year – will go straight to the Treasury.

Less than 10 per cent of the pay increase — just over £300 — will end up in their bank accounts, despite rising rents, according to Unison calculations.

General secretary Dave Prentis said Chancellor Philip Hammond should have gone further by also helping empty-nesters and those without children.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn used Prime Minister’s questions to call on Theresa May to apologise for breaking her “promise” on ending austerity.

He said the government would inflict £4.1 billion of cuts on non-protected government departments, disproving her claim that austerity is over.

Mr Hammond’s £400 million pledge to help schools buy “the little extras” would still result in head teachers “writing begging letters to parents,” Mr Corbyn added.

Ms May was also pressed over the Chancellor’s schools cash pledge by Labour MP Paula Sherriff, who said that the Budget offered just 10 per cent of the money that has already been cut and that even then it was ring-fenced for building maintenance and equipment.

The Dewsbury MP added: “What use is a whiteboard if there’s no teacher to use it?”

Ms May insisted that per pupil funding is being protected in real terms and reiterated that the government is putting £1.4bn extra into schools this year and £1.2bn next year.

Lamiat Sabin is the Morning Star’s Parliamentary Reporter.