Cost of Living

David Simpson Excerpts

Wednesday 27th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I will be brief, because time is short.

I listened to the debate with interest. Hon. Members can throw punches from now until Christmas eve about who is to blame, but the reality is that hundreds of thousands of people in the United Kingdom—men, women and children—are in poverty. It is estimated that 31,000 senior citizens will die because of the lack of heat or food in their homes. That is a tragedy for any country and for this modern-day United Kingdom.

Electricity and gas prices, and water charges, are increasing. People are finding it hard to repay their mortgages and, as we heard, interest rates could go up. People are being hit by the bedroom tax—others will use different terminology. The banks are, and have been, ripping them off. Food banks are increasing. In my constituency, which, at 200 square miles, is not the biggest in the UK, food banks are starting to increase, which never happened before. We are sending millions of pounds per year to fill Strasbourg’s coffers so that people there can waste it on some outlandish project and prop up other countries that have gone into bankruptcy.

Whenever the general public look at today’s debate, they will wonder what it is all about and ask, “Why should we bother to vote at all? We don’t seem to be getting much out of it.” I believe that, as elected Members, we should get closer to the general public and those who are going through serious poverty. It is a tragedy that people in this country have to choose between heating their homes or going out to buy their normal groceries.

A major problem we will have in future is personal debt. How that will be solved or dealt with we do not know, but it must be addressed. Millions of people will be in that difficulty.

Yes, vehicles are being exported to other countries. That is brilliant. Exports in general seem to be fairly good and moving forward, and business is looking fairly good, but the ordinary working-class general public currently do not see the benefit of any of it.

We talk about rebalancing the economy. I agree that we need to do that—it is imperative—but hon. Members have been sent to the House to represent the people of the United Kingdom. It is important that we look at rebalancing the lives of the people who sent us here.