Rising cost of living is having a devastating impact
Jack Monroe’s powerful comments to the work and pensions select committee tell us more about the social security system than some MPs might have realised (Cost of living crisis could be fatal for some UK children, Jack Monroe tells MPs, 9 March).
Eight years ago, Monroe told an all-party parliamentary inquiry into hunger, on which I served as secretary, that “if my benefits had been paid quickly, in full and on time, I would have been able to meet my living costs”. The cruel caps, cuts and freezes to which the social security budget has been subjected since then mean that, in Monroe’s words to the committee last week, even a 6% increase in April “is not going to adequately cover the difference in cost of living, plugging the gap for what people haven’t had for so long”.
Simultaneously, while Monroe was giving evidence to the committee, one of Feeding Britain’s affordable food clubs was reporting that it was serving a new group of people who, for the first time, find themselves on the edge of crisis. Unless April’s increase in benefits is bound more closely to the rising cost of living, the size of this new group will expand at an alarming rate.Andrew ForseyNational director, Feeding Britain
Last week, I was asked if I knew of any way that a single mother of two could get help to pay for an oil delivery. She could not afford the minimum 500-litre order, the price of which has nearly doubled since her last order. I searched diligently, but while there is help for users of energy firms, there appears to be none for those who have to pay for their heating upfront, be it oil, bottled gas or even solid fuel. Here in rural Northumberland, we have no access to mains gas and even the moderately well-off are sinking into fuel
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