Charity urges leadership candidates to match support with scale of cost-of-living crisis

Social change organisation, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), is calling on the leadership candidates to offer a package of support to help people struggling with the cost of living.

Analysis by JRF has shown families need £2550 to meet extra costs caused by the crisis, as the organisation called for a doubling in support for low-income households.

The current £1,200 currently pledged by the Government does not go far enough and only covers half the extra costs faced by low-income families this year, according to the charity.

Energy bills are already at record highs and are predicted to rise even further in January, when they could be as high as £4,210 a year.

Katie Schmuecker, Principal Policy Advisor at Joseph Rowntree Foundation said: ‘Last week the nation was confronted by sobering, and, for many, frightening predictions from the Bank of England about the months to come. Now that this is rightly at the centre of the battle for number 10, the political debate must lead to swift action which matches the scale of the coming emergency. Failure to respond will put many families beyond having to choose between heating and eating in the run up to Christmas, they will be unable to afford either.

‘Every day without a concrete plan to address this glaring gap is increasing anxiety for in low-income families who do not know how they will get through the winter.’

Current proposals from the candidates to tackle the crisis do not effectively target those who are most in need the JRF said.

Analysis has shown that for every £7 spent on reversing National Insurance rates, a policy suggested by Liz Truss, £6 goes to the top half of the income distribution.

Rishi Sunak’s proposal to cut fuel VAT only helps those who use energy, rather than those needing help with bills, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies found it only saves customers £154 a year.

Truss’ plans to drop green levies on energy bills will just reduce bills by £150 a year, a sum dwarfed by costly energy bills and slowing the transition to cheaper renewable energy.

‘The public believe tackling this crisis head on is more of a priority than tinkering with tax policy,’ said Schmuecker. ‘The scale of the intervention required could have been smaller if the UK’s social security system hadn’t been cut back and degraded for more than a decade, leaving many families exposed to economic shocks. 

‘As well as at least doubling the financial support package for people using the benefit system, a simple way to help lots of people quickly is to make debt deduction repayment rates more affordable. This would stop so many falling needlessly into further hardship.’

Photo by Jamie Street