CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANISATIONS HAVE been reacting to the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement, with a consensus emerging that the poorest people at home and abroad will be paying the price for a recession ‘made in 10 Downing Street’. On the climate and energy crises, environmentalists said the measures announced were “too little, too late”.
Commenting on the Statement, TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said: “The Conservatives crashed the economy – now they are making working people take the hit. This is a recession made in 10 Downing Street, which will put jobs at risk and hit workers’ wages.
“We are all paying the price for the last decade of Tory governments, which decimated growth and living standards. Today’s statement shows it will be two decades until real wages recover. Millions of key workers across the public sector – who got us through the pandemic – face years of pay misery as departmental budgets are brutally squeezed.”
“The chancellor talked about everyone making sacrifices, said O’Grady, “but the super-rich have once again been let off the hook – token tweaks to tax will do little to dent their bank balances.
“This is a government more interested in rewarding wealth than work. This is a government choosing to hold down the wages of nurses and teachers while it allows bankers unlimited bonuses. This winter, workers will be taking action to defend their jobs and pay. They need a government that is on their side – not one determined to hold down their pay at any cost.”
On public services, O’Grady added: “Public services face a crisis of soaring inflation meaning real spending cuts now. There is no more fat to trim. The Tories seem hellbent on breaking Britain. Our public services needed a real plan to get Britain back on its feet – the chancellor failed to deliver that today.”
Recent analysis from the TUC and New Economics Foundation showed that an additional £43 billion a year (2022/23 prices) would be needed by 2024/25 just to “stand still” and ensure real spending on public services stays at the level set out in the October 2021 spending review. The TUC says that as the Autumn Statement fails to deliver that funding, it means that real-terms spending cuts are being inflicted on our public services now.
On the rise in the minimum wage and benefits, O’Grady added: Ministers have announced the bare minimum on the national minimum wage and universal credit. With bills and living costs soaring, we need to ensure that everyone has enough to get by. That means raising the minimum wage to £15 an hour as soon as possible. And it means a significant boost to universal credit and child benefits. The basic amount of universal credit will be worth £43 a month less than in 2010.”
Reacting to the news that benefits would be uprated in line with inflation, Rebecca McDonald, Chief Economist for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation said: “It will be a huge relief to families on benefits that they are not facing what would have amounted to a historic cut. In taking this stand, the government has acknowledged that people cannot withstand benefits being eroded any further. However families are facing the worst winter many will remember and can’t wait for April – they need the help now to get through a winter of soaring costs. Even with uprating, rates are at historic lows and households facing difficult times are increasingly not able to cover the essentials.
“Through the course of this year we have seen an increase in the number of families who are falling behind with their bills, unable to afford hot meals and going without the essentials they need. The use of one-off payments to help with the cost of living may mitigate some of the looming disaster, but those who narrowly don’t qualify will be hit hard.
“The welcome increase to the benefit cap from April has recognised the pressures facing people on low incomes but the continuing freeze on LHA will hit private renters very hard. The Government must ensure that they help everyone who needs it this winter and plug urgent shortfalls during such historically difficult times.”
International development agency Christian Aid condemned the Statement for failing to end the freeze on international aid. Chief of UK Advocacy at Christian Aid, Sophie Powell, said: “The Prime Minister and his Chancellor have chosen to balance the books on the backs of people in poverty. Despite efforts from the Development Minister, we are once again seeing the further sabotaging of the aid budget.
“At the very least, the UK Government must return to using what aid budget there is for its proper purpose, directing funds to local communities in the greatest need. That means fighting hunger in East Africa and helping communities avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis.”
Friends of the Earth’s head of policy, Mike Childs, said: “Bold action to simultaneously tackle the cost-of-living and climate crises should have been at the heart of the Autumn statement, but the Chancellor’s announcement falls woefully short.”
“A nationwide energy efficiency drive is essential, but the Chancellor’s proposals are far too little and far too late. Kicking the can down the road on home insulation for another two years, means millions of people will continue to suffer cold homes and sky-high energy bills.The government should have listened to its own climate advisors, the Climate Change Committee, who only last week called for an urgent and rapid roll out of loft and cavity wall insulation.
“A £5 billion a year street-by-street, home insulation programme, focusing on those most in need first, would reduce the nation’s use of expensive gas, slash energy bills, create jobs and cut carbon emissions.
On the Windfall Tax, Childs added: “While an increase in the windfall tax is welcome, it is undermined by the Chancellor’s failure to close the loophole that allows fossil fuel firms to avoid paying most of it if they invest in more gas and oil. We won’t build a clean, green and prosperous future while we continue to subsidise our reliance on fossil fuels.
“The Chancellor clearly wasn’t listening when the Prime Minister promised to make the UK a clean energy superpower at the climate summit last week. If he had, he would surely have signalled an end to the planning barriers that hamper the development of onshore wind in England. It’s cheaper than gas, popular and there’s plenty of it. Instead, his tax on renewable energy companies risks reducing investment into much needed clean energy.”
The Peace Pledge Union (PPU) said that they will hold protests on Saturday 3 December, calling for military budgets to be cut so that money can be diverted to areas such as healthcare and energy costs. The PPU is working with other peace, human rights and anti-poverty campaigners on the issue.
Symon Hill, Campaigns Manager of the Peace Pledge Union (PPU), said: “While millions of British people are shivering because they can’t afford the heating, arms dealers and generals will today be toasting the Chancellor. Military spending is literally making us less safe: by stirring up military tension and diverting resources from tackling the very real threats of poverty, pandemics and climate chaos.”
* Read the Autumn Statement 2022 speech as delivered by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt here.
* Sources: Christian Aid, Trades Union Congress, Peace Pledge Union, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Friends of the Earth