Write The Week – Politics is Personal: this is the living standards election
Welcome to ‘Write The Week’ – a weekly blog written by our Remote Generalist Adviser Maya Prowse-Hall throughout the 2024 election campaign, spotlighting the key issues that need to be addressed by politicians.
Week 1 – Politics is Personal: this is the living standards election
At Citizens Advice we provide advice to more people than any other organisation in the country and this means that we have a unique insight into the economic climate as experienced by real people. Whilst politicians can sometimes seem to focus on abstract concepts like ‘future growth’, we are seeing first-hand how hard-working people are living out a cost-of-living crisis that is anything but intangible.
People are feeling the effects of this crisis in palpable ways – eviction from their homes, having to live in freezing conditions, not eating so that their children can. It is abundantly clear that what people need is not an indeterminate promise of a stronger future economy, but more money in their pockets now.
Though the cost-of-living crisis is a multi-faceted problem, the matter can be simplified – people’s incomes are smaller than their essential outgoings. This means that they are in debt just by covering the most basic costs. To showcase this, Citizens Advice produced a report called The National Red Index: how to turn the tide on falling living standards which is a comprehensive discussion of this nation-wide issue, including its causes, its effects and its potential solutions. It found that there are currently an estimated 5 million people in the UK and 14,710 people across the three constituencies that Citizens Advice South Gloucestershire works in living in the red. It is research like this that should be being interrogated by politicians.
Whilst the matter can be simplified in this way, people often come to Citizens Advice with an amalgamation of intersecting issues. To exemplify, in 2023 of all the people we helped nationally with an energy issue, over half also needed crisis support in the form of food banks and other charitable support. Of all the people we helped with Council Tax arrears, 39% also needed help with energy debts. There are other examples, but it is important to remember that behind these numbers are real people with real struggles.
At Citizens Advice South Gloucestershire, we speak to between 50 and 70 people per day, either through our generalist advice service or our specialist advice services. We spend time listening to their stories, understanding their needs and providing them with the tools to move forwards. But we also hear how their situations are impacting them both physically and mentally. One debt client who is in a negative budget said: “I’m finding it hard to cope and I’m feeling down. Food has gone up a lot so I’m not buying the same things as I used to”. Another said: “It hurts and gets to you. It’s terrible [the cost-of-living crisis] – I have never been in this situation in all my life”.
Over the course of the next month this blog will spotlight what we consider to be the most pressing cost-of-living issues in the South Gloucestershire area – rent, energy and groceries. It will platform the real-world experience of the economic climate discussed earlier. It will delve into what these specific issues mean for people and present Citizens Advice’s policy suggestions for tackling those issues head-on.
This is a call for politicians to engage. In the three constituencies we work in, over half of constituents say that the cost-of-living crisis is one of the most important issues in determining how they will vote.
So, our question for prospective parliamentary candidates is simple: how will you put pounds in people’s pockets?