MPs should spare us the £82,000 sob stories as millions struggle to get by
AS Tory MPs tell of their battle to live on £82,000 a year, Kathleen Morrison, who worked throughout the pandemic in a budget chain store, worries about a lack of money every day.
“It is such a struggle, some days all I do is cry,” she says. “After all my outgoings I am left with about £100 a month if I’m lucky. Our energy supplier went up by 33 per cent and now it has gone up another 33 per cent.”
Aged 33, Kathleen still lives with her mum in Belfast, and is both in work and facing in-work poverty. Yet she feels lucky to have any job at all. “I don’t eat much and what I do eat is basic, I can’t have luxuries,” she says.
“It is so hard to get a job, I’m just lucky to be in work. I would like to move out, but rent is very expensive.”
Earning £9 an hour, Kathleen gets slightly more than the National Minimum Wage of £8.91 an hour, but if she worked for a Living Wage employer, she would be getting £9.90, on the new rate announced this week.
An extra 90p an hour might sound like nothing to a Prime Minister who dismissed his quarter-of-a-millionpound second job as “chickenfeed”.
But for Kathleen, who like millions faces a difficult Christmas, it could be £7.20 on a day’s earnings. Money desperately needed during an imperfect storm of surging energy prices, soaring inflation, tax hikes and the vicious cut to Universal Credit.
The Living Wage Foundation calculates a “real living wage” based on the minimum someone would need to live on. In a time of rising prices it has calculated people outside London now need £9.90 an hour (a rise of 40p an hour on the previous rate), and £11.05 in London (a 20p rise). Most unions, meanwhile, are calling for £10 an hour minimum.
With 9,000 employers signed up to the LWF scheme – with half the FTSE 100 companies, football clubs such as Liverpool and Everton, and brands from Burberry to Nationwide – the increase will boost the wages of 300,000 employees. But it will do nothing for five million workers in Britain who earn less than these amounts, putting them at risk of severe hardship.
The country is sleepwalking from pandemic into a low-pay epidemic, where soaring costs simply cannot be met. All while some Tory MPs are “Levelling Up” their own salaries in second jobs that may conflict with the interests of their constituents. “There’s no way I could be an MP without my outside interests,” one backbencher complained to the Financial Times. “My wife works full time, I’ve got kids and need the money for childcare.” A fundraiser has even been set up poking fun at Peter Bottomley MP, who recently described things as “desperately difficult” for MPs struggling on £82k. Rachael Baylis, a 22-year-old graduate who lives in Brighton, was until recently doing two jobs in admin and a pub to keep her head above water. “Some days I ended up working 18 hours – it almost killed me. I felt like I was breaking my back doing two jobs. One day I went to work, and I burst into tears at the colleague next to me.”
She has now gone full-time at the pub to save on fuel and food costs. “I would like to save some money, but it feels impossible,” she says.
“I’ve asked my dad for trainers for Christmas, as mine have holes in them and the soles of my other shoes have ripped, so when it rains my socks are soaked. My jeans, which I have had for years, are ripping. I haven’t bought make-up in years, I don’t think people realise it costs to look presentable.” Jawad Khan, 23, who lives in West Yorkshire, recently left a job as a pizza delivery driver on £8.91 an hour because it was costing him to work. “On my wage I was having very little money coming in but then having to pay for £40-£50 fuel upfront,” he says. “I was using my own car, which meant more miles and wear and tear, it just got too much.” TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady says every worker should be able to afford a decent standard of living. “But Jawad, Rachael and Kathleen’s stories are all too familiar,” she says. “For millions in the UK, hard work doesn’t pay the bills. “Working people face soaring fuel prices, tax hikes and a Universal Credit cut. With prices rising faster than pay, many families will struggle to keep up with basic living costs. “Ministers must increase the minimum wage to £10, ban zero hours contracts and give trade unions greater access to workplaces to negotiate improved pay and conditions.” While the Government uses the rhetoric of Levelling Up as a cover, poverty is deepening across the UK. Our low-wage economy is rubbing up against vast price increases. The £20 a week stolen from Universal Credit claimants is beginning to bite. And millions of disabled people who never even received this rise are falling even further behind. So spare us the £82k-a-year sob stories.
For millions in the UK hard work doesn’t pay the bills