Rachel Reeves’ latest attempt to ease the cost of living crisis has landed with a thud among many Independent readers, who argued that cheaper biscuits, baked beans and zoo tickets barely scratch the surface of the financial pressures facing households.
The chancellor’s package included plans to cut tariffs on around 100 imported food items, reduce VAT on children’s meals and summer attractions to 5 per cent, introduce free summer bus travel for children and increase the tax-free mileage allowance for people who use their cars and vans for work.
While Reeves framed the package as targeted help for working families, many commenters said the measures felt small, tokenistic and disconnected from the realities of soaring energy bills, expensive public transport, stagnant wages and rising housing costs.
A recurring frustration throughout the discussion was the sense that Labour is “tinkering around the edges” rather than taking on the bigger forces driving hardship. Readers repeatedly pointed to energy companies, supermarkets and water firms continuing to make huge profits while ordinary households struggle to keep up with everyday costs.
Many called for bolder action instead, including wealth taxes, public ownership of utilities, lower taxes for low earners and stronger intervention to bring down essential bills directly.
Others questioned whether supermarkets would even pass on savings from tariff cuts, while some criticised the focus on products like biscuits and chocolate rather than fresh meat, fruit and vegetables.
Here’s what you had to say:
It’s all very well and good cutting grocery costs, but it’s a host of other things that affect the poor, such as public transport and energy costs, that are the problem. I worked it out a couple of weeks ago, comparing electricity costs since I moved into my first flat (under nationalised electricity – NORWEB for my area) to the costs now under private electricity, and in 45 years it has risen 12,000 per cent – that’s twelve thousand per cent.
Now tell me, has the official rate of inflation gone up by that, instead of not being worth the paper it’s written on? Grocery shopping cost about a fiver a week at the time, and now I’ll be lucky if I get change from £50 or less, not even taking into account shrinkflation. Bus fares are also up by a couple of thousand per cent since privatisation, and trains are now unaffordable and only available for the rich.
The idea that people will save is absurd. Firstly, cheaper biscuits may mean people will buy more. Biscuits are not good food, and increased consumption – which means more spending – will increase health spending as well.
If she reduces her tax cash collection, she will have to fund that by taking more from consumers elsewhere or cutting spending.
God loves a trier, but I don’t think reducing the price of baked beans, biscuits and chocolate will help families, other than to give them increased wind and further expanding waistlines.
What we need is strong leadership in government who have the nerve to introduce a wealth tax, without bowing down to the rich when they threaten to flee with their wealth.
Fairness where we’re in control of our own water and where it isn’t being polluted by rich foreign-owned billionaires who pollute it at our expense, raise their profits at our expense and raise our bills for their own gains.
Fairness where we’re no longer in debt by the billions to the energy companies, as we’re being fleeced by the oil producers simply for attempting to keep warm.
Fairness where we’ve suffered enough for 15 whole years as our public services were stripped bare, our assets sold off, and where our politicians were on the make for themselves or for their own careers.
We want to see the government working for us, proving to us that they’re on our side and not on the side of those whose money can buy the country out and who couldn’t care less about the population that the government should be working for.
The question that should be put to Labour is this: why, if last year they argued that many pensioners “didn’t need” the Winter Fuel Allowance because they had relatively comfortable incomes, are families now receiving generous subsidies when it could equally be argued that many of those households “don’t need” that support because they are already sufficiently well-off? This whole scheme is a monumental waste of money.
Chocolate and biscuits are not healthy essentials, and there is no reason taxpayers should be paying bus fares for children from wealthy families who can easily afford them themselves. Wasn’t it argued that supposedly wealthy pensioners didn’t need the WFA by Labour?
Public money should be targeted at genuine need, not wasted on universal giveaways that are unnecessary. This will do nothing to boost Labour’s fortunes.
Basically, Reeves and co are proposing cutting tariffs on certain foodstuffs in the hope that the powerful supermarket chains pass on some of the gain to their customers – a move that cuts tax take for the government while increasing the potential margin for companies that already make enormous profits.
I recently read, and posted, that in the UK now, 157 of the richest individuals hold 22 per cent of the UK’s entire GDP – a fivefold increase since 1990 – and 350 of the wealthiest families hold more wealth themselves than half the UK population.
This is against the backdrop of the real value of wages for the majority of UK citizens effectively flatlining for decades while the top 1 per cent and 0.1 per cent’s holdings have rocketed. Currently, oil and gas companies are making enormous unexpected profits into the billions. Water companies continue to pay dividends despite criminally inadequate services. People like Peter Hargreaves of Hargreaves Lansdown, a billionaire who gave £3.3m to the Leave campaign and crowed about the opportunities the “fantastic insecurity” of Brexit would provide for people like him and his company, are raking it in as the rest of us get poorer.
And what does a “Labour” government offer us in these circumstances? A couple of pence off a tin of beans and a pack of spaghetti – if Mr Tesco is feeling generous, of course.
Biscuits, chocolate and baked beans are three items that contribute to the obesity crisis, so leaving them more expensive should discourage their consumption.
Instead, impose price caps on lovely items such as broccoli, cauliflower and kale, and “nudge” people into healthier eating, which will save the NHS billions.
It’s a nice gesture, but the reality is kids’ zoo tickets are about £15, so 5 per cent is 75p.
I doubt it will be much help to anyone who couldn’t afford the £15 in the first place, and the ludicrous price of petrol will soak it up immediately.
It is disgraceful to tax people on life’s essentials. There should be zero VAT on all food and clothing. Wealth tax on multimillionaires and the billionaire class. Public ownership of all utilities. Stop people using companies to buy properties to evade stamp duty like Blair did. Make affordable housing a right and encourage self-built homes.
Labour made various promises pre-election, failed to deliver them, and is now rightly facing political extinction – and deservedly so.
So we have to hope the supermarkets will pass on the cost savings. My guess is they won’t. If you want to improve the standard of living for low-income families, cut out the middleman. Stop hoping it’s passed on. Lower the income tax burden on the low-paid and increase Universal Credit payments.
Some of the comments have been edited for this article for brevity and clarity.
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