Shadow chancellor calls for benefits rise to fight poverty
Rachel Reeves sees the clearest, tell-tale signs of poverty among schoolchildren in her Leeds West constituency. “You look at the kids and you just think, I know you are poor.
“You can see it in the school coats, especially in the winter, and in the school shoes. Kids not wearing the proper school uniform, sort of a bit of mix-and-match, and it is really sad.”
Incomes are two-thirds of the national average in the area she represents, just over £20,000 a year. “Although unemployment is low, a lot of the jobs are not paying wages that you can properly afford to live on,” Reeves says. “So many people rely on universal credit to top up their earnings – 60% of people in poverty today are in work.”
When Reeves first became Labour MP for the area 12 years ago, there were no food banks. “Not because no one cared but because we didn’t need them,” she says. Now, they are everywhere and in greater demand than ever as cost-of-living pressures intensify.
“We have set up clothing exchanges and school uniform exchanges, we have got a baby bank with stuff for young kids with nappies and clothes for kids. We refer people to food banks regularly. The schools are helping children with school uniforms. It is really tough.”
What worries the shadow chancellor most, however, is that poverty is about to get much worse in areas such as Leeds West, as inflation soars and energy prices go through the roof. She produces figures from the Resolution Foundation and other organisations showing that the number of people living in absolute poverty is expected to grow by as much as 1.6 million over the next few years.
On Wednesday, her opposite number, the chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak, will deliver his spring statement in the House of Commons with
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