Real-Terms Cut To Benefits Will Drive More Britons To Food Banks, Sunak Warned

Britain’s largest network of food banks has warned Rishi Sunak’s refusal to bring benefits in line with inflation will drive more people to emergency food parcels and turn the “cost-of-living crisis into an emergency”.

- Ashley Cowburn

The stark warning comes as the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) – the spending watchdog – said Britons are set for the biggest fall in living standards in a single financial year since records began in 1956.

Benefits are set to increase by 3.1 per cent, but with inflation expected to average 7.4 per cent over the next year, campaigners had urged the chancellor to intervene and ease the cost-of-living crisis.

The OBR added: “In the welfare system, lags in CPI uprating of benefits mean they fall by almost 5 per cent in real terms in 2022-23, reducing their real value by £12bn, and take almost 18 months to catch up fully with higher inflation”.

In a statement Emma Revie, the chief executive of the Trussell Trust food bank group, said Mr Sunak had “failed to create any security for people on the lowest incomes by failing to bring benefit payments in line with the true cost of living in the spring statement.”