This week's MP's column comes from Bradford West MP, Naz Shah

WITH inflation at its highest levels in three decades, the cost of  living crisis is impacting us all.

I know that in Bradford and throughout the country families will be sitting around the dinner table and speaking about how they can reduce their weekly shops, how they can reduce the amount they travel and cut basic costs just to survive.

For some families, the rising cost of energy and food will literally push them into poverty.

Figures released just weeks ago show 44.6 per cent of households in Bradford West are now living in fuel poverty.

That is a stark increase of 22.2 per cent in the number of households from 2019. The fact that now twice as many families in Bradford West are living in fuel poverty as at the start of the pandemic is devastating and shame on this Government.

The Government needs to act to support families but the much-awaited announcements in the spring statement provided nothing of substance to the working families struggling with rising costs. However, this isn’t just a failure to provide policies that work but complete neglect of how working families feel.

The reason people are not getting the support they need is that the ruling elites in the Tory party are not experiencing the cost of living crisis, like the rest of society.

In fact, only recently Clare Foges, a Tory Number 10 aide and speechwriter under David Cameron claimed the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak’s family wealth was so large that it would put him too far from the people he would lead.

Recently, it was revealed that Rishi Sunak’s wife pays £30,000 a year to secure her non-domiciled tax status, which allows her to avoid paying taxes on millions of pounds earned from her near-one per cent stake in Infosys overseas.

It is estimated that she saves close to £3 million in taxes due to this ‘loop-hole’ all while the guy setting the rules on taxes, her husband is rising the taxes for ordinary people by 15 times.

But it isn’t just the Chancellor and his family that have been using schemes to pay less tax, the former chancellor and the current Health Secretary Sajid Javid has also confirmed he was previously part of the scheme.

This week, Downing Street has conceded that it cannot say whether any other ministers or their spouses have or have previously held non-dom tax status.

There is a stark trend we see with this Government and that is one of arrogance.
They simply believe the rules do not apply to them.

Those in power, who make the rules, were the ones breaking the rules and now the ones making the rules are the ones exploiting loopholes to pay less tax whilst the rest pay more.

Taxi drivers, nurses, teachers, police officers and ordinary working families are having to skip meals just to feed their families and the response from this Government is empty words.

I recall last year whilst I was volunteering at a local foodbank, how a young child pointed to tins of food at a foodbank to choose what they wished to eat.

It was heart-breaking to witness this because this wasn’t a child choosing a luxury good or a treat but something that should be a basic necessity in the sixth richest country in the world.

The fact is a £200 loan will simply not cut it.

People need real support and real change. It cannot be one rule for the Conservatives and another for the rest of us.