‘A drop in the ocean’: Birmingham responds to Sunak’s mini-budget

theguardian.com:

In the nine years she has volunteered at the Ward End Elim church food bank in Birmingham’s Hodge Hill, Pat Woolridge has never known so many people to be struggling.

The constituency in the east of Birmingham has the highest fuel poverty rate in England at 27.4%, much higher than the national average of 13.4%, so many were hoping for a lifeline in Rishi Sunak’s spring budget announcement on Wednesday.

“It’s just getting worse and worse, our numbers are going up massively. People have struggled throughout the pandemic, but now it’s the fuel poverty,” she said.

“We’ve had people come here who have had no money to feed their meter, and they have no electricity, and when they get to us they’re really hungry. People do not have the money to budget and benefits are not going up, but everything else is.

“We see, week in, week out, people who are scared for the future.”

She said the government’s piecemeal approach to tackling issues was making little impact. The chancellor’s announcement of an extra £500m for the household support fund to help struggling families was “a tiny drop in the ocean”, she said.

Plans such as raising the national insurance threshold would have no effect for the poorest in society, she added. “The people we see are not paying national insurance anyway, and they’re still not getting enough money to feed their [energy] meters, which is the poorest people on the highest tariffs.”

The Labour MP for the constituency, Liam Byrne, said the budget would mean “colder homes for kids and pensioners, and longer queues for food banks”.

“Rishi Sunak had a choice today about who to help and, incredibly, he decided to help the richest. Two-thirds of the cut in national insurance [will] go to the lucky top half of society,” he