Gordon Brown is calling for an emergency Budget to help families tackle the cost of living crisis.
Writing exclusively for the Mirror, the former Prime Minister warns that “millions now dread the coming months, unable to afford their heating and food bills as they fall deeper into poverty”.
Blasting government efforts to support households, he says families face a £2,500 surge in food and energy bills.
In a joint article with poverty expert Professor Donald Hirsch, Mr Brown, who was Chancellor for a decade before entering No10, says: “We’ve already had three budgets this year.
“But we now need a fourth - and before October - to halt a catastrophic acceleration of child poverty which is now heading towards an unprecedented five million.”
The pair attack the “radio silence” from the Tory hopefuls bidding to succeed Boris Johnson in Downing Street this summer.
Mr Brown and Prof Hirsch say they “cannot tell us what they would do to tackle the most urgent and immediate challenge facing our country this winter: the cost of living crisis faced by vulnerable families.”
Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown and academic Donald Hirsch write exclusively for the Mirror.
There has been radio silence from all the Conservative leadership candidates who cannot tell us what they would do to tackle the most urgent and immediate challenge facing our country this winter: the cost of living crisis faced by vulnerable families.
Millions now dread the coming months, unable to afford their heating and food bills as they fall deeper into poverty.
The Government has offered eight million low income households £1,200 in total including £325 paid this month.
It may sound a lot but this sum won’t even cover the rise in food and fuel bills, let alone rises in the other rises in weekly bills.
For the typical family, food and energy bills alone will rise from £6,000 to £8,500 in the course of the year - and the Government’s cash is covering only half of this increase in fuel and food with nothing more to cover rents, council tax, telecom charges, clothes, toiletries, nor bus and rail fares.
And millions are even worse off than that family.
The Government’s flat rate payments take no account of family size nor any special needs.
For a typical family with two children, £325 means just £1.50 a week per family member - a mere fraction of the 14% increase in living costs predicted for the worst-off families.
We’ve already had three budgets this year.
But we now need a fourth - and before October - to halt a catastrophic acceleration of child poverty which is now heading towards an unprecedented five million.
This is a crisis that Britain hasn’t seen in living memory.
We have been talking to dozens of charities and faith groups who are equally alarmed and agree with us on the urgency of more decisive government support.
Foodbanks have become an all too familiar feature of the past decade of austerity.
They were set up to deal with occasional emergencies, like a delayed benefit payment.
But today, for all too many families, visiting your foodbank has become a regular occurrence near the end of the month, when the money from Universal Credit has run out.
And foodbanks are now being set up in hospitals to help nurses and in schools and in other workplaces to stop people going without.
And because people need more than just food, we now have bedding banks, clothes banks and baby banks.
We now see families with no cookers - unable ever to give their children a hot meal.
And it’s a poverty problem hitting hard people who are in work but on low pay, for wages can’t keep pace with inflation and, because of benefit cuts, the real value of child benefit has fallen by 20% - and many families with more than two children now get no Universal Credit for their third or fourth child.
Gordon Brown was Prime Minister from 2007-2010; Professor Donald Hirsch is director of Centre for Research in Social Policy, Loughborough University.
