We need more support for Londoners who have endured unprecedented financial situations.
The mini-budget under the last chancellor was followed by economic upheaval and is already having a devastating impact on homes, livelihoods, and pensions. Londoners are feeling the effects with shrinking real terms wages.
It also signalled a fresh round of £18 billion public spending cuts. Proposals, including a real-terms cut to benefits for millions of working-age people, have to be stopped.
Households across all parts of the Capital are struggling with spiralling energy bills and rising inflation. Annual grocery bills have risen by £643 as grocery inflation hits a record 14%. We need to see more immediate support, especially with winter around the corner, without it, already struggling Londoners will have even less food on the table and more people will be pulled towards a period of poverty.
The six-month sticking plaster support package for businesses currently on the table will help in the very short-term, but London’s schools, colleges, hospitals, libraries, museums and businesses, big or small, keep the lights, and heating on. There is no long-term plan in sight. Instead we see a worrying picture for economic growth.
An attempt to revive the failed model of trickle-down economics is a mistake. The mini-budget was a missed opportunity to help Londoners who need it the most and further widens the gap of economic equality. The new chancellor will announce a new financial statement on October 31. The last one saw richer households gain 40 times as much as the poorest. He must explain how his policies will protect those on lower incomes.
A recent, utterly shocking, report showed there were more than 330,000 UK excess deaths that can be attributed to spending cuts to public services and benefits. It found that 12 years of austerity has resulted in an increase in people dying prematurely after experiencing reduced income, ill-health, poor nutrition, housing and social isolation.
At City Hall, I will campaign and lobby the government to get my constituents, and all Londoners, the support they need, so we can come out the other side of the cost of living crisis and continue London’s post-pandemic recovery.
Anne Clarke is London Assembly member for Barnet and Camden.
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