‘A drop in the ocean’: Birmingham responds to Sunak’s mini-budget

Hodge Hill has the highest fuel poverty rate in England, and many were looking to the chancellor for a lifeline

This article titled “‘A drop in the ocean’: Birmingham responds to Sunak’s mini-budget” was written by Jessica Murray Midlands correspondent, for The Guardian on Wednesday 23rd March 2022 17.17 UTC

In the nine years she has volunteered at the Ward End Elim church food bank in Birmingham’s Hodge Hill, Pat Woolridge has never known so many people to be struggling.

The constituency in the east of Birmingham has the highest fuel poverty rate in England at 27.4%, much higher than the national average of 13.4%, so many were hoping for a lifeline in Rishi Sunak’s spring budget announcement on Wednesday.

“It’s just getting worse and worse, our numbers are going up massively. People have struggled throughout the pandemic, but now it’s the fuel poverty,” she said.

“We’ve had people come here who have had no money to feed their meter, and they have no electricity, and when they get to us they’re really hungry. People do not have the money to budget and benefits are not going up, but everything else is.

“We see, week in, week out, people who are scared for the future.”

She said the government’s piecemeal approach to tackling issues was making little impact. The chancellor’s announcement of an extra £500m for the household support fund to help struggling families was “a tiny drop in the ocean”, she said.

Plans such as raising the national insurance threshold would have no effect for the poorest in society, she added. “The people we see are not paying national insurance anyway, and they’re still not getting enough money to feed their [energy] meters, which is the poorest people on the highest tariffs.”

The Labour MP for the constituency, Liam Byrne, said the budget would mean “colder homes for kids and pensioners, and longer queues for food banks”.

“Rishi Sunak had a choice today about who to help and, incredibly, he decided to help the richest. Two-thirds of the cut in national insurance [will] go to the lucky top half of society,” he said. “This was quite simply a budget that failed to rise to the new challenges of a post-Covid, war-ravaged global economy and a country still struggling to adjust to Brexit.”

On a busy shopping street in the centre of Hodge Hill, it was rising fuel and food costs on most people’s minds.

“Everything has gone sky high, it’s terrible. I don’t know how people are going to be able to afford it. There’s going to be a lot of crime happening I think,” said Ali Zaman, 30, a supermarket worker. “Even if you go down to Tesco, milk has gone up. It’s everything.”

He said that while cutting fuel duty by 5p a litre would help, it wouldn’t go far enough for people who were really struggling. “It’s good to see that but I don’t know how much difference it will make,” he said.

Woolridge also stressed that rising fuel costs were going to have a huge impact on low earners. “Some people are not even going to be able to afford to go to work, because there is not enough salary coming in to heat their homes or fill their cars,” she said.

Linda McGowan, 69, said she and her husband, both pensioners, had stopped using their car as much because of rising fuel prices. She had hoped the spring budget would include measures to boost pensions but was not surprised they did not get much of a look-in.

“I know pensions did go up previously but it wasn’t much,” she said. “We’re just not going to be able to manage on how much we get. We are very worried about it, and I think a lot of people are really struggling.

“I know the weather is getting warmer, but if you’re a pensioner and you’re stuck in all day and you need the heating on, where is the money going to come from?”

Back at Elim church, a queue started to form outside the building shortly before doors opened at 1pm.

One of three branches of the Aston and Nechells food bank, it has handed out 197 food parcels so far this year, up from 145 during the same period last year, and is only expecting numbers to rise when energy price rises hit in April.

“We can only prepare so much. All of our food is donated and we’re seeing fewer donations coming because people can’t afford it any more,” she said.

“It does seem as if there’s a disconnect between the government and reality,” said Keith, another volunteer at the food bank. “It’s almost as if they live in a bubble of their own, they aren’t seeing what is actually happening. It needs fixed and it needs fixed as soon as possible for the sake of the future of the country.”

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