Cost of living crisis could be fatal for some UK children, Jack Monroe tells MPs
The impact of the cost-of-living crisis on children in the UK already living in poverty would in some cases prove “fatal”, the food writer and campaigner Jack Monroe has told MPs, adding: “And that’s not a term that I use lightly.”
Children and disabled people experiencing food insecurity risked being trapped in a “never-ending loop of difficulty”, including chronic health conditions, mental illness and depression, Monroe told the Commons work and pensions select committee.
Monroe described the situation faced by millions of children living in poverty as “already untenable”, having become increasingly so over the last decade, and called for social security benefits to be uprated in line with inflation.
Individuals on the lowest incomes had been hit hardest by increases in the price of everyday food essentials, and the reduced availability of value product lines, she told MPs. A £20 food shop now bought about two-thirds the amount of goods it did a few years ago.
“And that’s not people deciding not to go to the theatre or not have legs of lamb or bottles of champagne; that is people deciding: ‘We won’t eat on Tuesday or Thursday this week’ or ‘we’ll turn the heating off’ or ‘we’ll skip meals’,” she said.
Last month Monroe successfully campaigned for Asda, her local supermarket in Shoeburyness, Essex, to reintroduce value food lines, and drop prices on a number of basic products such as rice and pasta, which had in some cases gone up by more than 100% in a year. Asda reintroduced the items and prices in all its UK stores and online.
Asked by the committee chair, Stephen Timms, why she thought supermarkets had withdrawn their value range, Monroe said: “They thought they could get away with it. They did it for a very long time.
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