Liz Truss is leading a pro-poverty coalition: Yorkshire Post Letters

Having written to you twice since 2020 on the issue of child poverty in Bradford, I continue to feel great dismay at the failure of our government to meet the needs of our most vulnerable.

A strong social security system benefits all of us. It is there for us at all stages of our lives: when we have children, if we fall sick or ill, if we unfortunately lose our jobs or businesses, and as while we grow older.

Given this understanding around the need for strong social security, I – and surely many of your readers – was alarmed recently when I heard that the government were considering uprating benefits in line with earnings rather than inflation.

According to analysis published by the Resolution Foundation, if the government fail to uprate benefits in line with inflation, households claiming Universal Credit could lose hundreds of pounds a year by 2024-25, with a single person losing around £400, a single parent of one child losing over £600, and a couple with two children losing over £1,000.

My concern for low income households worsened this week when I saw that further analysis had been published, this time by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, showing that, in every parliamentary constituency in the UK, at least one in ten households would be affected by this flagrant neglect of the needs of some of our most vulnerable.

When one looks closer at the parliamentary constituencies set to be most heavily impacted, Bradford East and Bradford West are among the top five with over half of households expected to be affected, at 51 per cent and 57 per cent respectively; the only constituency with a higher rate than Bradford West was Birmingham Hodge Hill, with a rate of 61 per cent of households potentially affected.

While the Prime Minister and her Chancellor seem hell-bent on labelling anyone opposed to their policies part of an anti-growth coalition, one would argue that it is more accurate for those on her side of the aisle to be considered part of a pro-poverty coalition, and if the government fail to raise benefits in line with inflation, it will be remembered as a truly callous policy decision, undoubtedly consigning millions to cold homes and empty stomachs. We must do all we can, as a society, to protect our most vulnerable households from the most abject poverty.

Jerry Diccox, Wilsden Hill.

Why are our homes so expensive to heat?

It’s not entirely due to the war in Ukraine as the Government would have us believe. We have some of the worst insulated homes in Europe and that is a result of years of Government policy which has never provided anything more than half-hearted support for retro-insulating old homes, and which has cut-back time and again on the paltry funding programmes that did exist.

As for new-build, close ties with the building industry ensure that nothing too demanding or too harmful to profits is required of them - and so even those in new homes are locked into high heating bills. We’d all be paying much less for heating if the Govenment understood and responded appropriately to the need to cut demand, and to do so is a win-win for people and planet.

But conservation doesn’t swell energy companies’ profits and so we have Truss, characteristically head-in-sand, forging ahead with announcements that confound and appall her critics and advisors alike, announcing that what’s required is more energy production! I don’t think the public will forget that while they are struggling to pay their bills and are concerned about climate change, the Government's focus is on serving the interests of energy companies and their shareholders.

Liz Jesson, Sherburn in Elmet.

I refer to your article headed ‘Council should not refer to county residents as customers’ (The Yorkshire Post, September 24).

I gained no feeling of satisfaction from reading the said article even though this is just the sort of twaddle that I envisaged happening when the new arrangements for amalgamation of smaller councils into one large one were announced some time ago.

The same inane, totally unimportant shenanigans are rearing their ugly heads already, except eightfold, for the number of councils brought together as one time-wasting and money-wasting bureaucracy.

Speaking personally, I couldn’t care less whether I’m referred to as a resident or a customer or anything else that isn’t actually rude, as long as my needs and the needs of my village (oh sorry, I gather that Sherburn is now a town!) are met swiftly and efficiently by people who are actually on the real earth and not on ‘Fullers', as my Mother used to say - an expression that will be lost on your younger readers and councillors.

I believe in democracy but not in inefficiency which unfortunately often manifests itself via these organisations.

Funds are very tight I know which makes it even more imperative that money and time should be spent wisely and not just because a particular subject happens to be popular and ‘of the time’.

I wish the new North Yorkshire Council well but if they are already wasting time and effort on minor details I’m afraid I don’t hold out much hope for any items that are of real importance to the residents/customers/clients/villagers/townies/plebs, etc, who are at their mercy.