Cost of Living Increases

Beth Winter Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

It is exactly 12 months since I conducted a cost of living survey in my constituency. The results were absolutely shocking, with 90% of constituents feeling worse off than in the previous 12 months, 80% struggling to pay their bills and over 80% reporting that their mental health had been impacted by the cost of living crisis. Since then, this Tory Government have done absolutely nothing to ease those pressures, and people’s situations are much worse. The cost of living crisis is a political choice.

In the brief time that I have to speak, I will focus on pay and prices. The cost of living is being driven by inflation exceeding incomes—prices are outstripping pay. Millions of people, particularly in the public sector, are having pay awards imposed on them that are below the rate of inflation, and people are being forced—yes, forced—to go on strike. The Government simply do not care. With inflation outstripping pay, month after month, there is an urgent priority for this Government to inflation-proof pay for the public sector and all workers as a short-term measure in the cost of living crisis. I will continue to stand in solidarity with trade unions seeking that outcome.

Turning to food prices, the Office for National Statistics reported last week that food prices were driving inflation. Food prices have increased 19.2% over the past year, but key staples have increased by much more. The impact of this is clear, as others have said today. Food banks in my constituency, like those everywhere else in the country, are seeing more and more people arriving for food, including at the food bank where I volunteered for more than 12 months, which has had an astronomical increase in the number of people turning up on the doorstep. This is shameful—shameful—for the Government, and it is why I have felt compelled in the last month to work with our local trades council to raise nearly £2,500 for the food bank, but we should not have to do that in the world’s fifth richest nation. It is an absolute disgrace.

Yet the supermarkets are doing very well. We hear that Tesco has paid more than £1 billion in dividend payments to shareholders when most people in this country are struggling. It is not right that supermarkets continue to make hundreds of millions of pounds in profits at the expense of ordinary households.

I finish with a quote from a constituent, “Why are the rich continuing to get richer in this country while the rest of us suffer? I do not see any point in living. Sadly, as usual, the Tories are deaf and just do not care.” I implore the Government to wake up and listen to the majority of people in this country and take urgent action to address this cost of living crisis.