Cost of Living Crisis
Cost of Living Crisis
We cannot escape the fact that inflation has made life more difficult in the last ten years. No-one could have predicted the Covid-19 pandemic which has not only affected prices but also reduced capacity in worldwide supply chains and changed the way we shop, work and travel, but the impact has been made much worse through us leaving the EU and the terrible decisions made by Liz Truss’s short-lived Government.
Actions of the Conservative Government for which we are all paying the price and which has led to more children and more pensioners falling into poverty.
Families who for generations have asked nothing from the state are turning to food banks; people who have worked hard are seeing their jobs disappear and they have no access to retrain because colleges have not been given authorised courses or because as adults they cannot qualify for funding; students maintenance loans don’t cover the basic rent and they are living on one meal a day, yet their debt will stay with them for much longer; multi-generational households are becoming the norm as couples with children are forced to stay living at home because they cannot save for a deposit or pay spiralling rents.
- The Lib Dems would cancel the cruel and ineffective two-child cap on benefits and reverse the Universal Credit cut, replacing the stick of sanctions with the carrot of work-based incentives.
- We would provide compensation to WASPI women born in the 1950s along the lines of the Parliamentary Ombudsman
- The triple lock on pensions, which we introduced, would be retained lifting pensioners out of poverty
- We would address the Fuel Standing charge on Electricity and Gas so households aren’t paying for energy they are not using
- We would extend the Windfall Tax to include profits from refining and selling fossil fuels investing revenue improving insulation to every home.
- We need to invest in HMRC so they can do their job properly and tackle tax fraud
- Our colleges need investment so they can ensure young people have the skills that match the needs of our economy.
- Our skills wallet will allow adults to retrain so no-one ever feels they’re written off
- Children cannot work if they are hungry, we will extend it to every child who lives in a family receiving Universal Credit through primary and secondary school.
- We need urgent action to ensure that property built here is lived in by local people, using Stamp Duty and council tax measures
- Councils need to be allowed to build more homes for social rent and decide locally whether to remove the right to buy so they are protected from future sale.
- We would work to re-enter the Single Market reducing red tape and costs to trade more freely with our neighbours