Rishi Sunak has broken his promise to help with the cost of living

theguardian.com:

I run a food bank in Stoke-on-Trent, and the people who come in are telling me that they’re scared.

It’s a terrible combination of many things – the fuel crisis, the cut to universal credit, the rise in price of food and essentials, bills and rents, and the fact that benefits have not reflected the actual cost of living in this country for a long time. In Stoke-on-Trent almost half of children are living in poverty. How are people going to cope as this gets worse?

A woman in her 40s came to see me recently. She lives alone, is teaching and has two other jobs besides, yet she does not have enough money to buy food for herself. She asked me: “How will I get through this?” People are beside themselves about what the next six months will bring because we all know this is going to get so much harder – and it has already been hard for many years.

Rishi Sunak’s spring statement promised to mitigate the cost-of-living crisis, but what he has announced won’t make the difference people coming to us need. A cut in fuel duty and raising the national insurance threshold will never be enough to cancel out rocketing heating bills.

People are already telling us they can’t afford to put on the heating. Money Saving Expert’s Martin Lewis is now saying he’s got no tools left to help people stretch their money any further. This is not a case of people not “budgeting properly” – it’s a crisis. We are seeing a whole new group of people coming to us now – people in full-time work who do not have enough money to pay their rent and bills and buy food.

We do all we can at our food bank – we have advisers who try to help people access the benefits they are entitled to, and we have a local partnership with Money Matters that supports people with debt