Cost of Living and Food Insecurity

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Listening to Conservative Members, one would think that the cost of living crisis was something natural, like bad weather or a freak accident. They have said that the Government have done everything they can to help, but that soaring living costs, cuts in support and the fall in the real value of wages are beyond their control. That is simply not true. Britain is facing a cost of living crisis not in spite of the Government’s political choices, but because of them.

Millions in the UK are struggling because of whose side this Conservative Government are on. Last week the Tories took the side of the bankers, voting to hand them a tax cut worth £1 billion a year. Last night they voted to slash social security for millions of people by roughly 4% in real terms. Last week, they took the side of fossil fuel giants, refusing to back a motion for a windfall tax on companies like Shell and BP. Then, just a few days later, they gave the green light to energy bills soaring by nearly £700. As the Government refuse to bring forward a wealth tax on the super-rich, they are hitting workers with a national insurance hike.

Time and again, the Government take the side of the wealthy few, not the struggling majority. They scrap the £20 a week universal credit uplift, but hand contracts worth £880 million to a handful of Tory donors. They dump the pensions triple lock, but let the likes of Amazon get away with tax dodging on an industrial scale. They allow Britain’s billionaires to add an extra £106 billion to their fortunes in the pandemic, but stand idly by as poverty gets worse and worse, with nearly 5 million children now in poverty, including around 7,000 in Coventry South.

This is not inevitable. It is not a natural disaster. It is about whose side this Government are on: the many or the few? Do they hand bankers a tax cut while hiking national insurance for workers, or do they do things differently? [Interruption.] I can tell that some Members want to carry on doing the same: supporting the wealthy few. The alternative is taxing the richest and funding a proper safety net. It is about bringing in a windfall tax on fossil fuel giants and stepping in to bring down energy bills. That is what the French are doing—not letting bills soar by 54% like our Government, but capping the rise at just 4%.

There has been a lot of focus on the Prime Minister, and he should have resigned a long time ago, but it is not just him. Whether it is the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak) or for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), they have all voted to slash taxes for the richest, while cutting support for the rest. They are all in it together and they all need booting out.