As the cost of living continues to rise without effective Government intervention and polls indicate increasing numbers of households are being forced to choose between heating and eating, new analysis by Crawley Labour drawing upon research by the Food Foundation reveals the staggering impact of food insecurity in Crawley, including that:

• 1,573 households in Crawley go a whole day without eating
• 2,404 households in Crawley went without eating, even when hungry, because they could not afford to eat
• 3,846 households in Crawley are eating smaller meals or skipping eating altogether because they cannot afford food

With spiralling energy and housing costs cutting deeply into people’s budgets, these latest figures bring into stark reality the potential impact of Rishi Sunak going through with the Conservatives’ proposed £13bn National Insurance tax increase.

The £13bn National Insurance hike matches the £8.7bn in losses for PPE that doesn’t work and the £4.3bn the government has written off to fraudsters, fraud which could have been easily prevented had the Government followed Crawley Borough Council’s example of running anti-fraud checks on COVID grants rather than threatening to ‘name and shame’ the council.

At the same time, ministers have refused to bring in Labour’s proposed energy plan which would save £600 for those struggling the most. Labour’s plan would be funded by a one-off windfall tax on North Sea Oil and Gas producers who have profited from price rises. In the last week Shell announced annual profits of $19bn, BP announced annual profits of $12.8bn.

Commenting on the figures, Cllr Peter Lamb, Labour Leader of Crawley Borough Council said:

“For families to regularly go hungry in the Twenty-First Century is a national scandal, one created and exacerbated by Conservative policies for over a decade. Yet, even now, rather than trying to help average families to make ends meet, they’re planning a new tax hike on jobs and voting down Labour’s efforts to tackle the cost of living crisis. It is the duty of Government to act in the interests of the whole country, not only for what personally benefits Conservative ministers, their donors or their friends.”