Freezing Britain, hot politics – people struggle for survival as politicians battle it out on immigration:
Did he do well as Prime Ministe... Not really say a majotiy of Britons on Prime Minuister Rishi Sunak's progress report. File Photo Shamlal Puri
BRITAIN AIMS FOR A WHITE CHRISTMAS AMID BLEAK BLACK BLOT OF HUNGER AND COST-LIVING-CRISIS
By SHAMLAL PURI in London
Senior Editor – UK and Associate Publisher
Worth Noting:
- As the British lawmakers debated their Rwanda Policy, there was rhetoric on both sides of the Tory Party. They were split into two groups – one against the Rwanda Asylum Agreement and those supporting Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his resurrected Rwanda Asylum policy, the original version of which had already seen one death after being declared illegal by the Supreme Court in London.
- During the crunch voting in the Commons, those supporting Sunak grouped and those against mainly right-wing Tories.
- The Sunak ‘faction’ won 313 in favour and 269 against. The government only won its vote in the Parliament, withdrawing some sections of Britain’s Human Rights Act. Still, it has yet to face challenges from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), from which some MPs demand this country pull out.
Winter temperatures in the United Kingdom are plummeting to below freezing, bringing snowfalls in parts of the country; there are high hopes of White Christmas.
However, there is increased political heat as lawmakers fight on the migration crisis, holding the nation to ransom.
Any talk of a crisis in this part of the world would inevitably lead your thoughts to the British Houses of Parliament, where a battle of strange sorts has been raging these past few weeks, pointing to a winter of discontent among the warring MPs.
On Tuesday, British MPs voted on the Rwanda Policy with the central question – Is Rwanda a safe country to deport asylum seekers arriving in the UK?
This question arose because Rwanda has a bloodstained past where thousands were killed in the 1990s in the tribal war between the firebrand Hutus and the Tutsis, in which an estimated one million people were reportedly killed.
Official figures claim 800,000, mainly from the weaker tribe, were killed.
The weaker ones – men, women and children were slaughtered, and their skulls, some with deep gashes, lie in the Skulls Museum in Rwanda as a stark reminder of its bloody past.
As the British lawmakers debated their Rwanda Policy, there was rhetoric on both sides of the Tory Party. They were split into two groups – one against the Rwanda Asylum Agreement and those supporting Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his resurrected Rwanda Asylum policy, the original version of which had already seen one death after being declared illegal by the Supreme Court in London.
During the crunch voting in the Commons, those supporting Sunak grouped and those against mainly right-wing Tories.
The Sunak ‘faction’ won 313 in favour and 269 against. The government only won its vote in the Parliament, withdrawing some sections of Britain’s Human Rights Act. Still, it has yet to face challenges from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), from which some MPs demand this country pull out.
The British Parliament agreed that Rwanda was a safe country to deport migrants.
Really? Ask Rwanda diasporans living in the UK, who themselves had fled the genocide in their homeland.
The Tories are determined to throw out illegal migrants even though it has crossed swords with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which blocked the earlier version of the Rwanda Policy, which the Supreme Court in London declared unlawful as it would breach British and international human rights.
The Rwanda Asylum Pact has cost the British exchequer £240 million in the belief they would be able to deport thousands of migrants. Rwanda has, however, said it can accept only a few hundred.
The Rwanda asylum exercise has drained much-needed cash resources that Britain can ill afford and could have been utilised for the welfare of Britons instead of what many critics see as a waste of funds.
Amidst this political storm, these politicians have forgotten that there are people they have been elected to serve interests they have put on the back burner: they are British people to whom they owe loyalty.
The UK is suffering from the credit crunch, cost of living crisis, and spiralling energy costs with new tariffs coming into force in the New Year.
Poverty is rife in the United Kingdom, with millions unable to buy food.
The National Health Service is starved of money that could be used to beef up the crumbling system from which doctors and nurses are leaving in droves.
New research from the Trussell Trust charity shows the extent of hunger in the UK is spiralling. Some 15% of all UK adults or their households have experienced food insecurity from June 2022 to June 2023.
The research shows that certain groups of people are more at risk, the drivers pushing people towards hunger, and how this leads to further issues, including isolation, debt and health problems.
The main driver of this curse of hunger is the lack of money.
‘Hunger in the UK’ is the most in-depth study on hunger, its causes, impacts, and who is affected in the UK to date, evidencing that the main driver is a lack of money. The research shows that certain groups of people are more at risk, the drivers of hunger, and how this leads to further issues, including isolation, debt and health problems.
The research also finds that while around 7% of the UK population was supported by charitable food support, including food banks, most people facing hunger (71%) had not yet accessed any form of charitable food support.
Paid work does not always protect people from having to use food banks. One in five people using food banks in the Trussell Trust network are in a working household. Just under a third (30%) of employed people who have had to use a food bank are in insecure work such as zero-hours contracts or agency work.
Emma Revie, chief executive at the Trussell Trust, says: “Being forced to turn to a food bank to feed your family is a horrifying reality for too many people in the UK, but as Hunger in the UK shows, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Millions more people are struggling with hunger.
“This is not right. Food banks are not the answer when people are going without the essentials in one of the richest economies in the world. We need a social security system that provides protection and dignity for people to cover their essentials, such as food and bills.”
Painfully, Trussell forecasts that more than 600,000 people will need the support of its food banks over three months from December 2023 to February 2024,
Food banks across the Trussell Trust network expect to provide more than one million emergency food parcels between December 2023 and February. This equates to an average of one food parcel every eight seconds (11,500 daily) and 7,000 people seeking support daily.
Between December and February last year, these food banks supported more than 220,000 children with emergency food and 225,000 people who needed a food bank for the first time. It is anticipated these numbers will be even higher this year.
Most food given to Trussel Food banks is donated by the affluent in the local communities with little government help.
While donations levels have remained stable compared to last year, the continued increase in need is leading to the vast majority of food banks having to purchase stock to make up for a shortfall.
A recent survey of 282 food banks indicated that in the last three months, 93% had to purchase food when prices were higher than ever to keep up with the rising levels of need. These pressures have also led to one in three (32%) food banks reporting that they are concerned about being able to continue running at their current level in the coming months.
Natasha Copus, Project Manager at Southend Foodbank, said:
“Our foodbank distribution centres have seen an unprecedented need in our community. We are committed to being there for our society’s most vulnerable and providing three days of food.”
She fears the added pressure of heating and energy costs will cause hardships this winter.
Ms Revie, Trussell Trust Chief Executive, said, “One in seven people in the UK face hunger because they don’t have enough money to live on. That’s not the kind of society we want to live in, and we won’t stand by and let this continue. Every year, we see more and more people needing food banks, which is just not right.
“ We must end hunger across the UK so that no one needs a food bank to survive.”
Trussell Trust revealed that food banks provided 1.5 million emergency food parcels to people between April and September 2023.
This is the most parcels the charity network has ever distributed at this point in the year, representing a 16% increase from the same period in 2022.
Low incomes, especially from social security, debt, health conditions and issues with social security payments such as delays or sanctions, were the main reasons people had no option but to turn to a food bank for help.
A record 540,000 food parcels were provided for more than 265,000 children living in families who could not afford the essentials. This is an 11% increase compared to the same period last year, reflecting the continuing rise in the need for the support provided by food banks. Families with children were among the most recipients.
An alarming 320,000 people have needed to use a food bank for the first time in the past six months, warning that food banks are at ‘breaking point’ as more and more people in communities across the UK cannot afford the essentials.
The Trussell Trust believes that the situation is unlikely to change in the coming months with this stark new data leading them to forecast that food banks in their network will distribute more than a million emergency food parcels between December 2023 and February 2024 – the equivalent of providing a parcel every eight seconds this winter.
Jess Holliday, Deputy CEO at Eastbourne Foodbank, said, “We are deeply concerned about the alarming rise in the number of children needing our support. Last month, 633 of the food parcels we provided were for children. Day after day, people tell us they don’t have enough money to buy the basics. ”
One resident said, “I have sold my car. I have sold everything and cut everything out. But that’s still not enough. All I want is enough money to pay the basic bills and have some left to buy my own food.”
Ms Revie, Trussel Trust’s Chief Executive, says, “These statistics are extremely alarming. An increasing number of children are growing up in families facing hunger, forced to turn to food banks to survive. A generation is growing up believing that seeing a food bank in every community is normal.
She called on the UK government to build on its work to protect people from increasingly severe hardship and commit to putting an Essentials Guarantee into legislation to embed in our social security system the widely supported principle that, at a minimum, Universal Credit should protect people from going without essentials.”
Another report commissioned by the Trussell Trust and conducted by the Scottish Centre for Social Research revealed that increasing hunger among disabled people is forcing them to use food banks.
The report proposes a range of evidence-based policy changes to help bring about a more compassionate, person-centred, and fairer disability benefits system that prevents disabled people from falling into financial hardship and needing to turn to a food bank.
Disabled people face significant additional costs and lower incomes that put them at greater risk of going without the essentials. This is the result of the barriers disabled people face to work and the low-paid and part-time nature of work, combined with the very low levels of income from the social security system.
Disability benefits should act as a lifeline that allows everyone to participate fully in society. However, 62% of people in disabled households referred to food banks are not receiving any benefits specifically related to their disability, and the figure in Scotland is even higher at 74%.
Disabled people suffer more because of a faulty, cash-strapped disability benefits system riddled with bureaucracy, which is damaging to people’s mental and physical health and deepening exclusion.
The study urged the government to help disabled people with improved decision-making processes.
Where does all that leave the government of Rishi Sunak?
Most Britons believe that Rishi Sunak’s government has done a bad job on key public priorities such as the NHS and the cost of living,
The latest Ipsos Political Monitor, taken 1st – 7th December 2023, explores public attitudes to the job Rishi Sunak’s government has done in critical areas, whether Labour would do a better job and what impact they think recent changes in the Autumn Statement will have on their finances next year.
Most of the public say Sunak’s government has done a bad job in critical areas of importance to voters.
Ipsos’s monthly Index shows that the economy, cost of living, NHS, and immigration are the most critical issues to the public. 80% think Sunak’s government is doing a bad job improving the NHS, 79% on immigration, 77% on dealing with the cost of living and 68% on managing the economy. In most cases, scores are similar to those in July last year.
Conservative supporters are more sympathetic towards the government’s record than the public overall. For example, 56% think the government has managed the economy well. However, by far, the issue that this group believe the government has done a bad job on most is immigration. 74% say the government has done a bad job here. A majority of Conservative backers are also critical of the NHS (53%), cost of living (55%), reducing regional inequalities (54%), and crime (56%).
Keiran Pedley, Director of Politics at Ipsos, said:
With the current focus on immigration and the government’s Rwanda bill, it is worth remembering that other issues are important to the public, too. It will concern the Conservatives that large majorities think Rishi Sunak’s government has done a bad job managing the economy, improving the NHS and dealing with the cost of living.”
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