It’s right that benefits are uprated as usual but this should never have been in doubt and legislation mandating inflationary increases is needed as a basic protection for living standards. Struggling families have been worrying themselves sick for months about whether an unmanageable income cut was coming in order to provide the government with a rabbit-out-of-the-hat moment.
Parents typically need to find at least £39 per week for a child’s secondary school education and £19 for a primary-aged child, research for Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) finds.
Our response to the Budget: Some of the Chancellor’s plans are welcome but some are worrying. Many of the childcare changes announced are a big step forward but the stringent job-search requirements for parents on universal credit (UC) are concerning and overall the package is far short of what struggling families needed from the Chancellor as they face another year of high inflation.
Low-income families will have an estimated £1,000 shortfall for energy costs alone in the year to April 2023, if as expected Ofgem’s price cap rises to £3,554 in October, new analysis from Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) shows. An announcement on the new cap is due tomorrow.
With 38 bills but no direct help with spiralling costs, this speech was a far cry from what struggling families needed to hear today. Government offered no short term comfort for parents struggling to feed their kids in the face of rocketing prices, and no long term vision for ending child poverty.