Cost of Living Increases

Joanna Cherry Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

The Minister says that almost every other economy is facing similar issues, but, of course, other economies have not recently left the European Union. The British Retail Consortium has said that labour shortages—shortages of HGV drivers and warehouse workers—which affect the supply chain are one factor behind the increases in food prices that all our constituents are experiencing. What assessment are the Government conducting of the impact of leaving the EU on the huge increase in food prices in our supermarkets?

[Mr Clarke]

Contrary to that rendering of events, the challenges we face in relation to the supply of HGV drivers are those faced by countries across Europe. This workforce is predominantly elderly, and has been badly affected by the covid pandemic. Industries across the world, let alone Europe, continue to be affected by the same challenges that we all face of constrained supply and rising demand as the world wakes up from the pandemic. This has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit, and it is fundamentally misleading to suggest otherwise.

As I said to the House earlier this month, we are focused on easing the pressures caused by the cost of living wherever and however we can, and of course we are constantly considering what more we can do. I should remind the House that we are providing support, worth about £12 billion in this financial year and next, to help families with those challenges.

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[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

May I say how pleased I am that we are having this incredibly important debate today? While Parliament has been hopelessly paralysed by the Prime Minister’s refusal to do the decent thing and resign, I hope that the debate allows us an opportunity to discuss the human reality of this Government’s cost of living crisis.

Up and down this country, people are facing the anxiety that comes from worrying about whether they can pay their bills and heat their homes. Having to decide whether to eat or heat is an awful indictment of Britain in the 2020s. If that decision has to be made by one person, that is one person too many, but, under this Government, millions of people are having to make that decision. Moreover, there is total inaction; there is nothing to say. There is also nothing in this light parliamentary timetable to help. The Minister himself, in the near 20 minutes that he spoke, gave nothing to help families in this country in the cost of living crisis. The Government could have tabled an amendment to the motion—I am sure that the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) would have allowed it—for us all to vote for and back to help the people of this country with the cost of living crisis, but we have radio silence. Because of that inaction, more and more face hardship and worry.

Inflation stands at more than 5%, a 30-year high. Energy bills are to rise by 40%—on average by £700 per household—shortly. The average UK worker is still not any better off than they were when this Government took power more than a decade ago. The Chancellor is planning the largest tax hike in living memory, taking the tax burden on working people to its highest since 1950. What a record that is: a high-tax, high-inflation, low-growth Tory party. This weekend, we were led to believe that the entire Cabinet would get behind stopping the planned national insurance tax rise, but what did we hear today? We heard the Chancellor turning against his own national insurance hike by calling it the “Prime Minister’s tax”. That is a whole new definition—the Chancellor of tax-dodging. Nobody in the country is buying it. The Government should bring the question back to this House if they want to vote the national insurance rise down.

The human cost of the situation is stark. In the past year, Citizens Advice Scotland has seen a 38% increase in the number of people coming to it for advice about being unable to pay their mortgage. The figure is much higher for those unable to pay their rent. Polling conducted on behalf of the same organisation found half a million Scots cutting back on their food spending in order to pay their energy bills this winter—before those huge rises. What is worse is that official statistics on inflation do not capture the full extent of the difficulty facing families, especially those on low incomes. The food blogger, Jack Monroe, who rose to fame with recipes showing how to cook family meals for less than £10 a week, highlighted that on social media over the weekend. They gave examples of the cost of the cheapest pasta in the local supermarket rising by 141% in the past year, the cost of the cheapest bag of rice rising 344% and the cost of baked beans rising 45% year on year. At the same time, those on the lowest incomes have seen universal credit cut and their budgets tightened even further.

To make matters worse, as the hon. Member for Glasgow East mentioned, the costs of filling up the car have risen to their highest level ever and, while they rise like a rocket, they fall like a feather, needlessly costing families much more. Then we have Brexit infiltrating the supply chains, making it much more difficult to get food into the country, increasing costs in our supermarkets. That is the reality not of a global market, but of this Government’s decision making. Families are working every hour under the sun but are still unable to make ends meet, and the position is getting worse, not better.

[Joanna Cherry]

I am grateful to my constituency neighbour for giving way. He is talking about the price of food in the supermarket. Earlier, he will have heard me put to the Minister the problems identified by the British Retail Consortium with labour shortages affecting the food supply chain. Unless we were watching the BBC, we will all have seen the queues at the Kent ports over the weekend. What assessment has the Labour party made of the impact of Brexit on food price increases, and what does the Labour party intend to do about the problems of labour shortages and supply shortages caused by Brexit?

[Ian Murray]

I thank my constituency neighbour for that question. I hope that she watched with great interest the speech of the leader of the Labour party just a few weeks ago, and, indeed, the other speech he made before Christmas about making Brexit work. The reality is that this Conservative Government have given us a position whereby Brexit does not work. We have a thin deal that we said would fall apart, and it is falling apart. What we have to do is to get into power to fix the problems with that and to build on that relationship. That is the reality of where we are.

I listened with interest to the Minister not answering the hon. and learned Lady’s question about HGV drivers and the cost of food and supply chains. He rightly said that there is an ageing workforce, but that shows that the Government have not planned for the medium to long term in that regard—it is as if everybody just got older overnight, rather than there being some plan. It sums up the Government that they have not had the foresight to see some of those problems coming. None of the promises that the Brexiteers opposite made to us about sunny uplands have come to pass; indeed, the opposite has come to pass, as we can see in the supermarkets and in prices themselves.

Those of us elected to this place owe it to the millions of people across the country who face such hardship to do everything we can to alleviate and change it. In the UK in 2022, nobody should have to choose between heating and eating. The Government have shown no compassion and not even pretended to care. Let us remember that they voted to cut the £20 a week universal credit uplift for the poorest in this country and refused to feed school kids in the holidays. The only response to the crisis from the Government so far, in all the noise of partygate and everything else, was when they snuck out a £4.3 billion fraud write-off from covid funds and business loans, which was branded “nothing less than woeful” by their very own anti-fraud Minister, Lord Agnew, shortly before he resigned at the Dispatch Box a few hours ago in the other place. Maybe the Minister would like to do the same this afternoon: get to the Dispatch Box, resign, grab his folder and suitcase full of wine, and head for the hills. Any Minister with any kind of morality would be doing just the same thing.

I am pleased that the SNP has called the debate, but it is not a bystander in this crisis either. The SNP is the Government in Scotland and has been for 15 years. A 33-year-old today, struggling to feed their family while paying their energy bills, has spent their entire adult life under the Scottish National party Scottish Government. Such a person might wonder why the SNP did not support legislation put forward by Labour colleagues in Holyrood to enshrine as a human right the right to food. Perhaps we might be able to find out this afternoon why not.

Parliamentary time will be taken up “in weeks” with legislation for another referendum. People are having to choose between heating and eating, but that will be the SNP’s priority in Parliament and elsewhere for months. I accept that Parliament has the capacity to do other things, but nobody should be under any illusions. All the oxygen in the vacuum will be taken up in Scotland with another referendum or the thought of another piece of referendum legislation. That is the reality of what will happen. With the paralysis in this place, the Scottish Government are obsessed by what gets them out of bed in the morning, rather than the real, everyday issues of Scots.

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[Douglas Ross]

SNP Members are cheering because they are hoping that I move on very quickly. Like any good official, I will follow the rule from the referee and agree to do so. However, I think that many people in Scotland will be watching and will have heard that not a single SNP Member was able to answer such a crucial question for Scotland’s future.

I welcome the opportunity to discuss an important issue for my constituents in Moray and for constituents across Scotland and the United Kingdom. Households are struggling with the rise in global energy prices; with inflation as a result of spending decisions taken by Governments across the world, including this Government, who have invested £315 billion to get us through the global pandemic; and, of course, with rising prices of essential items such as food because of continued supply chain issues, again as a result of the pandemic.

[Joanna Cherry]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Douglas Ross]

I have given way quite a few times—[Interruption.] Okay, I am happy to give way, but my answer to the hon. and learned Lady will be that, as the Chief Secretary to the Treasury has said, this is a global problem. We are seeing problems with shortages—[Interruption.] She says that she has not asked the question. I am about to give way, but I am pretty sure that her question is going to be about the British Retail Consortium and the points it has made, because she has asked it three times already.

[Joanna Cherry]

Clearly the hon. Gentleman, having been described as a lightweight by his colleagues, is planning a future career as Madam Zelda looking into a crystal ball, because he seemed to think that he knew what I am going to ask.

The hon. Gentleman’s constituents in Moray, like mine in Edinburgh South West, will have noticed a very significant increase in food prices in supermarkets. The British Retail Consortium—I know how much he loves British things—says that labour shortages, including shortages of HGV drivers and warehouse workers in the supply chain, are contributing to those increased prices. Many commentators have said that the red tape on food imports from the EU is contributing to those increases, too. In the interests of the hon. Gentleman’s constituents and mine, and given his lofty standing—in the Scottish Conservative party, at least—will he tell us what request he has made of the Treasury to assess the impact that leaving the European Union in the middle of a global pandemic will have on the cost of living crisis?

[Douglas Ross]

It turns out that that was exactly the same question and the same point that the hon. and learned Lady has already made three times. She mentions the British Retail Consortium, but she also has to accept that there have been labour shortages and driver shortages in other parts of the European Union, the United States and many other parts of the world. I understand that it fits her narrative to paint her question in that way, but we also have to remember that these are global issues that Governments across the world are having to address.

Governments in this country have to think carefully about the effect that their policies have on family budgets. That is why I was amazed, but sadly not surprised, that there was not a single mention in the SNP motion calling on the nationalist coalition of the SNP and the Greens in Holyrood to take some decisions itself that could make an immediate and direct impact on the cost of living in Scotland. The SNP motion that we are debating makes reference to tax rises, which is very interesting given that for the past decade and a half SNP colleagues have been running the country that is the highest-taxed part of the United Kingdom. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) says it is about the rich, but it is not; it is about the 1.1 million Scottish taxpayers who earn more than £27,393. That is not rich; that is 1.1 million people across Scotland. Those who earn just over £27,000 are not the rich; people across Scotland are being punished by SNP decisions.

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[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

It is a real pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Neale Hanvey), and I entirely support his views on Scottish independence. I also support the call for a constitutional convention, which was the idea of our First Minister and was first called for by her just prior to the start of the covid crisis.

I just gently say to the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) that those of us who are returned to this House on an SNP ticket will continue to talk about independence for so long as we are returned in the very significant numbers that we are. If she has been looking at the opinion polls over the weekend, she will see that support for independence in Scotland is at 50%—considerably more than support for her own party—so I am afraid that her calls on us to stop talking about independence will very much fall on deaf ears. We believe that we could tackle these matters better in a social democratic, independent Scotland.

The real focus of this debate is how the weight of the cost of living crisis will fall hardest on low-income households, who on average spend a much higher percentage of their income on energy and food and will therefore be most affected. A number of hon. Members have referred to Jack Monroe’s work. Jack Monroe has shown in a blog and in an excellent article in The Guardian at the weekend how the rise in food costs in particular falls on the poorest people in our society.

As for the rise in energy costs, I will give one example, from the many that I could give, of a constituent of mine in Edinburgh South West. She contacted me in despair after receiving her renewal quotation from Octopus Energy:

“I am really shocked. I currently have a fixed 12 month tariff and pay £86.55 a month but from end of Jan 2022, they”—

Octopus Energy—

“have proposed the following deals between £116 and £240 per month. I expected prices to rise and expected £200-300 more a year however based on their new tariffs I am looking at an extra £1000 to £2000 per year.”

That is just one example of the sort of difficulty that my constituents have been put into by this crisis.

The constituents who will suffer the most are those who are already in considerable difficulty because of the misery heaped upon them by unfair Conservative and Unionist party policies. The Government have it within their power to help these low-income families and the most hard-hit. The Government can always find money when they want to, and they have written off a pretty extraordinary amount of money, squandered during the covid crisis because of what their own resigning Minister has called a “woeful” lack of oversight.

This is about priorities. When my constituents suffering on low incomes go to the supermarket to shop, they do not go with a suitcase to fill with wine and spirits for illegal parties; they go with a wee basket, which they fill sparsely, taking things out as they realise that their meagre budget will be exceeded. The low-income families in my constituency do not have money for cheese and wine parties in the garden. Most of them do not have a garden, and if they did, they would not have the leisure time to spend in it because they are working all hours in low-paid jobs and the gig economy to feed their children.

In households not just in my Edinburgh South West constituency but across this country—across all the nations of the United Kingdom, on the Tories’ watch—parents go hungry to feed their children. The walls of those low-income families are not papered with expensive designer wallpaper; often, they are damp and poorly insulated, so they need to spend even more on extortionately priced energy to heat them than they should. The Tories have the power and the money to solve this. Do something.