Shame on ‘I’m all right Jack’ Tories

THE end of furlough, the cuts to Universal Credit and the rising cost of energy are about to entrench inequalities in the country exposed by the pandemic.

With some sectors such as tourism, travel and hospitality not fully recovered from the peak of the Covid crisis, the failure to extend furlough will mean many workers laid off in these industries will find themselves on the dole very soon.

Ministers will point to the rising number of vacancies in delivery firms and supply chains. But turning an airline pilot into a butcher or a trucker is unlikely to be an overnight success.

As our interview with John Gray, who has been searching for a job for the last three months, shows, the recovery will be mismatched and likely to be driven by low-wage jobs and not by skilling up.

The removal of the £20 pandemic uplift is quite simply a fast lane into poverty for thousands of people. The Conservative conference next week will be beyond parody when it is addressed by a Prime Minister willing to plunge so many back into poverty while boasting about “levelling up” the country.

The embarrassing sticking plaster of winter grants announced by Chancellor Rishi Sunak is only a fraction of what is being taken away. The more than 40 per cent of people in receipt of Universal Credit who are in work, and facing a massive rise in household bills, will be lucky to get anything at all.

With food and fuel prices spiking up, it is going to be a winter of woe for many. Cuts to Universal Credit benefits, just as thousands face unemployment, can only make matters worse.

Citizen’s Advice Scotland has told how 400,000 people in Scotland have missed paying a gas or electrical bill during the pandemic.

How does this government think people will cope after the added support they’ve received is removed?

With the rising cost of living, no wonder many fear the worst over the long winter months.

As a final trumpet call, the Tories are also going to increase taxation on low earners to patch up the health and care system they starved of funds for a decade.

All of this is going to cause real hardship for millions of people

To declare, as Scottish Secretary Alister Jack did, that removing £20 a week from a low-income family is “not a cut” is to fail to understand the reality of life on the edge of poverty.

His off-hand remark that the uplift had “run its course” sums his party up. I’m alright Jack, indeed.

Tory ministers, a world removed from the pressures that ordinary people face, either do not understand or don’t care about the situation they have created.

These decisions made by Boris Johnson and his government will cause misery to families across the country.

Shame on them.