I’d like to see Amber Rudd on breadline. No one wants to live like this
AMBER Rudd has been busy dismissing concerns about poverty in the UK and the cruelty of the Universal Credit system.
So, while she addressed the Commons as Work and Pensions Secretary for the first time, the Mirror gave some of her battling constituents the chance to speak up themselves.
None was more damning than widow Georgina Mitchell, 60, who is struggling under the new benefits system.
She said: “I’d like to see Amber Rudd on the breadline. It’s not nice. No one wants to be living like this.”
Another constituent, Max Monroe, was searching for somewhere to sleep.
Max, 30, has been homeless since February after he lost his job and was moved from the old benefits system to Universal Credit.
One of dozens of rough sleepers on the streets of Hastings on the south coast, he is nervous of the die-hards bedding down in the filthy underpass. So Max, from Hailsham, East Sussex, curls up in his sleeping bag in the catacombs beneath a decaying boarding house. Grim, but out of the rain. His story is a snapshot of austerity Britain. In Ms Rudd’s Hastings and Rye constituency, poverty and wealth are uncomfortable neighbours.
And it is impossible to ignore the impact of Universal Credit, pushing the jobless on to the streets and forcing families to rely on food-banks. “When I was put on Universal Credit I couldn’t catch up with my rent,” Max tells me. “I had been working at Wickes and Wetherspoons before but after that there were no more jobs. I had a flat which I had to pay £385 a month. I was soon £200 short every month. It escalated so I went on the streets. I’d say Universal Credit was to blame.” Outside the local Jobcentre Plus, just up the hill from
Max, I meet mum-of-one Carol Pentecost, 29, pushing her nine-month-old son Blake in a buggy.
Carol is at least £100-a-month worse off since the roll-out of Universal Credit.
“After I’ve paid the bills, there’s nothing left for food and nappies for Blake,” says Carol. “We have to get three bags of groceries from the food-bank.
“Amber Rudd needs to stop Universal Credit. It’s making everything worse – a lot of the people we know in the same situation are suicidal. You feel depressed all the time, not like looking for a job.”
DWP spokesman said: “No one has to face hardship with Universal Credit and we recently announced a £39million partnership with Citizens Advice to help vulnerable people with claims.”
However, homelessness is visible on almost every street in Hastings, where four rough sleepers died over the Christmas period at the start of this year.
Chrissy Brand, of campaign group People’s Assembly Against Austerity in Hastings, said: “It’s bad enough for the local community having Amber Rudd as our out-of-touch and destructive MP.
“It’s positively dangerous for the country to have her as the Work and Pensions Secretary, months after she had to resign due to her part in the Windrush scandal which destroyed so many lives.
“She says Universal Credit has done great things for Hastings. Wrong, there has been an 80% rise in food-bank use here over the past year because of that.”
Now it seems, Ms Rudd is oblivious to the national picture, after she dismissed a UN report into poverty in Britain. She said the language used in the damning investigation was “wholly inappropriate”.
Its author Philip Alston accused the Government of being in denial about Universal Credit. And if Rudd fails to listen, she could lose her 346 majority at the next election and end up on the scrapheap, like the Universal Credit guinea pigs in Hastings.
■ Join our campaign and sign the online petition: change.org/p/theresa-may-mpstop-the-rollout-of-universal-credit-andreplace-it-with-a-fairer-system
Universal Credit is making things worse. A lot of people I know are suicidal CAROL PENTECOST SINGLE MUM, RIGHT WITH SON BLAKE