Cost of Living Support

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Thursday 22nd June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

As I said earlier, the £150 should be taken at face value, and I think I made the point that there are a number of other initiatives to help those who are disabled. It is important, as the Minister in the other place said on Tuesday, to look at the total package, including the £150, that we have in place to help those who are disabled.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. However, neither his remarks this morning nor the Statement acknowledge the real size of the problem that we now have. I am almost sorry for him that so many things have happened since the Statement was first made on Tuesday, one of which was yesterday’s Joseph Rowntree Foundation report showing that 5.5 million people in lower-income households did not have food last year—they skipped meals and had poor meals, which of course affects their health—while 4.5 million lower-income households are now in debt, many of them to people who will then demand very high rates of interest and so on. They cannot get credit in the way that he and I could get it, at lower interest rates—although all the interest rates are going up now. These are really scary numbers, and the JRF has shown that this is now embedded across our society.

I talked this morning for an hour and a half with organisations in the north-east that are working with the most vulnerable families. I came off that call really scared about the future, because of the numbers involved. Does the Minister understand that this is far more serious than the way we have paid attention to it so far suggests? We really need a serious, overarching strategy to tackle poverty and improve public services, so that the most at risk get the best and the most help, which they cannot get at the moment.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I hope the House will recognise that I am certainly not playing down the seriousness of the position at the moment. I am very aware, as the House is, of the further interest rate rise today. The Government absolutely recognise the pressures that people are facing and have acted, providing total support of over £94 billion, which I mentioned earlier, over 2022-23 and 2023-24. I have already mentioned the uprating, which I will not go over again, and that we will be making further cost of living payments totalling £900.

However, there is more to say, given the noble Baroness’s question. I have already mentioned that the Chancellor is meeting mortgage lenders tomorrow to see what more can be done, but he has already met the Competition and Markets Authority, to be sure that there is fair competition between the supermarkets so that we make sure that food prices come down. As we are all aware, food inflation is still far too high. It was 19% last month; it has now nudged down a bit but it is still far too high. That is really important, particularly for those who are the most vulnerable. I reassure the noble Baroness that we really do take this seriously. I think we all know that it is a defining moment.