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HOUSING
Escalating poverty crisis is now seeing elderly people ride buses all day to stay warm
Anti-poverty experts aren’t sure ministers realise how serious the cost of living crisis is, so they’ve laid bare the real-life impacts for them.
Inflation is at its highest since records began, leaving people across the country forced to choose between paying for food and heating their homes. Anti-poverty charity the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) says these situations are not “inevitable” but the result of political choice.
“A decade of cuts and freezes to benefits have left many people in our society in increasingly desperate situations,” said Chris Birt, associate director at JRF.
“With the price of food, clothing, transport and energy growing fast and overall inflation now at seven per cent, the impact of these policy choices is becoming ever starker.”
He added, “We hear of people unable to cook the food they rely on from foodbanks as they cannot afford to switch on the oven or hob; families limiting themselves to one shower per week, and elderly people riding buses all day to stay warm.”
The energy price cap has been hiked up 54 per cent, impacting 22 million households and marking an average £700 increase in annual bills. Economists reckon it could soar again in October.
Meanwhile, benefits have risen just 3.1 per cent – less than half of the rate of inflation – and Birt said Sunak has “simply refused to use” the social security system
