Cost of Living

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Wednesday 27th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

The time that I have is nowhere near enough to address the magnitude of the cost of living crisis and the spectacular economic failure of the Government’s policies, but I will try my best.

The average wage in my constituency, after income tax and national insurance contributions, is £1,319 a month. That budget faces extraordinary pressure as every aspect of the cost of living is on the rise. The average energy bill is £110 per month, which over the course of the year amounts to nearly an entire month’s pay.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

The hon. Lady has just stated that every aspect of the cost of living is on the rise under this Government. Does she recognise that council tax, a very important component of the cost of living, has decreased by 9.5% on average during the period of this Government, yet it doubled under the Labour party when it was in office?

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but he needs to look at the bigger picture, which is what I will go on to talk about—the cost of everyday living in general.

Water costs a further £30 per month to my constituents. Rent makes another significant impact. A single bedroom property costs £395 a month in the private rented sector. Social properties are, of course, cheaper, but as my hon. Friends have explained on numerous occasions, there are few such properties to go around. Council tax starts at £80, so we need to take that off the overall budget. We are talking about working people who, if they have children, will also need to cover the cost of child care. As Labour highlighted in last week’s debate, the cost of child care is rising five times faster than pay and now amounts to more than £100 per child per week for 25 hours. That is around £460 per month.

All this leaves the average individual in my constituency with just £244 to live on per month. That needs to cover food, transport, other bills as well as a multitude of other costs that are part of daily life. I admit that this is rather a crude calculation, but the fact is that people in South Shields living on this meagre income are the lucky ones. Despite everything, they have managed to hang on to their homes and provide for their families through sheer tenacity and the hard work ethic that permeates my constituency. But what about those who fall below the average? What about those on zero-hours contracts, the 3,592 unemployed, the elderly and frail, the homeless and the rough sleepers? And there are those who are affected by the Government’s bedroom tax, who will lose an extra £450 a year.

Five thousand children in my constituency live in poverty, and many of them live in households with a parent in work. Some 4,260 of my constituents live in fuel poverty, and 1,440 of them are affected by the bedroom tax. We have a rise in homelessness and a rise in rough sleepers, yet still this Government fail them. This is a Government led by a Prime Minister who said prior to the 2010 elections that the Conservatives

“are best placed to fight poverty in our country.”

This is an astonishing claim when we know that over a million people have fallen into poverty on his watch, including 300,000 children.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I do not have time. I am sorry.

My local citizens advice bureau, despite taking on extra staff, is struggling to cope with the volume of inquiries it has had about debt. The once monthly requests for emergency food aid are now almost a daily occurrence. My local food bank and soup kitchen have seen demand for their service rise to unprecedented levels. Increasingly, the people coming to these agencies, I am told, are in work. This is no surprise, as we now have 1.4 million more people being paid below the living wage than in 2009.

When I was unemployed, when members of my family and I fell on hard times, I was proud to live in a country where I and they would be able to get help. This is no longer the case. I am still proud of my country, just not of the people who are running it.

People are turning to payday loans to deal with the hardship they face. Last year in my constituency the average borrowing constituent had debt to the tune of £1,610. We all know how quickly this debt can become unmanageable, with dire consequences for those who owe. But these are not people after easy money. They are working people who no longer have the ability to save for a rainy day.

As bad as things are for working people, they are worse for the unemployed. In my constituency more than 3,500 people are out of work. The Chancellor said that

“every job lost in the public sector has been offset by three new jobs in the private sector.”—[Official Report, 26 June 2013; Vol. 565, c. 305.]

This has not happened in South Shields. I recently held a jobs fair in my constituency, and had great co-operation from local employers, but the total number of jobs that these organisations were able to offer was just over 1,000, well short of filling our employment gap.

The situation is worse for our young. A constituent of mine told me how his daughter was offered a job interview and forced to travel to Leeds at short notice. She did not have the money to pay for the train ticket. When she asked the DWP for help, she was refused it. She is now on a zero-hours contract, and some weeks her pay is lower than when she was claiming benefit—but I suppose this Government do not mind about that, as long as she is no longer contributing to the unemployment statistics.

In my constituency people come together every day to help those who are struggling, but they find their task harder and harder as levels of need are rising to an unprecedented degree. Organisations such as Citizens Advice, the Key project, Hospitality and Hope, St Aidan’s, Supported Living and St Hilda’s church are all making a difference, but without the Government taking action their task will continue to be a heavy one.

To sum up, my constituents are great, hard-working, big-hearted people who show every day the ethos of hard work and social responsibility, despite the onslaught of misery caused by this Government.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

I have listened with interest to my hon. Friend and to the previous speaker, the hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke). If there is no cost of living crisis, or no one is responsible for it, why will this Government go down in history as the Government of zero-hours contracts, payday loans, food banks and the bedroom tax? Does not that tell us all we need to know about the cost of living crisis?

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

My hon. Friend is spot on. This Government are to blame for the cost of living crisis and economic failure in our country.

In the past, the values of my constituents were rewarded and people could be confident that hard work would bring them security and fulfilment. Now that link is broken. They are made to work for their poverty and the Government fail to uphold their responsibility towards them. We need a Labour Government to restore the link.