Such is the Begum family’s financial strife that seven-year-old Anisa recently told her mother they were so poor they might as well move to where her grandmother lives: Bangladesh.
Fleeing to one of the world’s more impoverished countries may seem strange, but the fact it is being discussed in one east London home is telling of widening desperation. Now, at the end of an already gruelling week, things could be about to get worse for millions with real-terms welfare cuts reportedly under consideration by a government that recently cut taxes for the rich.
For the Begums – mother, father and three children – the forecast £90 a week real-terms fall in their universal credit payments would leave them not just penniless after regular outgoings, but unable to switch on the heating, buy new clothes or even afford enough groceries, they said. Already they are “frozen” because they cannot afford to feed the meter for heating.
“Can you imagine?” said Alifjane Begum, Anisa’s mother. “We have three young kids to feed. We just want to put food on their plates and something on their backs. For clothing I would have to go to charity shops; for food we’d definitely have to start going to the food bank.”
Begum’s husband works as a minicab driver, but has lung problems after contracting Covid-19 that limits earnings. Their monthly welfare already goes fast: £450 on rent, £200 on council tax and £280 on utilities. Sometimes they have about £100 left for food and other things. Other times they have to borrow from family. Recently Anisa asked for ear muffs, but the family cannot afford such trifles.
“I really don’t know what to do,” her mother said. “I want to fly away with my kids and hide.”
About 5.8 million people in the UK rely on universal credit, more than 2 million of whom work. If the government drops its pledge to raise payments by consumer price index rate of inflation and peg the benefit to earnings, a couple with two children would typically lose £90 a month and a single parent with a child, £50 a month, said the Resolution Foundation thinktank.
Asked about reports of the change, the Department for Work and Pensions simply said the coming review would consider “the most recent prices and earnings indices”.
“We hear about families making difficult choices, but there won’t be any choices to make,” said Sara Ogilvie, the policy director at Child Poverty Action Group. “They won’t have the money to buy food or pay the bills. Things will be catastrophic.”
Hungry children will struggle more at school; more will face the stigma of poverty that can damage mental health; and poor children are more likely to have shorter lives and need greater help from public services such as the NHS, she said.
Annie, 50, a single mother of three children who works part-time for the NHS but also relies on universal credit said a cut would see her turn off the heating and switch from fresh to processed food, “so the kids don’t go hungry”.
Citizens Advice, which is helping Annie, is seeing record-breaking numbers seeking crisis support – more than two people a minute. It reckons nearly 500,000 people could be forced on to prepayment meters by the end of the year because they cannot afford their energy bills.
“I am really scared,” said Annie, now in tears. “How am I going to feed these children, take care of them and buy them winter coats? What am I supposed to do if they deduct more and more money and everything else is going up?
“They say they want people to work. I am working. And for what? I am exhausted, mentally and physically. This isn’t just the reality for me, it’s the reality for hundreds of thousands of people. These people who sit in government, do they know they are supposed to be working for us, not punishing us?”
