Anti-poverty and food campaigner, Jack Monroe has warned MPs that the effects of the cost of living crisis would be “in some cases fatal” for the “millions of children living in poverty in Britain today.”
Addressing the Department of Work and Pension (DWP), Monroe stated that food prices have appeared “affordable”, clouding the crisis at hand.
Monroe explained that “rent has gone up, gas has gone up, electricity has gone up, council tax has gone up” to a point “where people have less to spend on food in their household expenditure”.
READ MORE: ONS to revise inflation calculations after Jack Monroe pressure
“It’s not that the affordability of food has got better, it’s that the expense of everything else has got worse,” Monroe summarised.
The campaigner also welcomed Asda’s pledge to roll out its lowest-priced value range to more stores saying, “The onus on ensuring that people are able to feed themselves adequately and decently and nutritiously shouldn’t fall on the price point of pasta in a supermarket.”
Additionally, Monroe took to Twitter to announce that “every single” witness on the panel at the DWP Select Committee had advised the government to raise benefits in line with the accurate cost of inflation.
Currently, the Spring Statement has budgeted a 3.1% increase in benefits instead of an 8% increase, which would better reflect the “true cost of inflation”.
The statement comes as inflation has reached a three-decade high, with the war in Ukraine expected to further impact the CPI, currently forecasted to reach 8% in Spring.
Monroe added: “In my experience of 10 years on the coalface of anti-poverty work, I can tell you that people are just eating less or skipping meals or having less nutritious food, bulking out on that 45p white rice and 29p pasta in lieu of being able to have fresh fruit and vegetables and nutritionally balanced meals.”
“It’s not that food has got cheaper because it certainly hasn’t. It’s that everything else has got more expensive so there’s less in the household budget for food.”
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