40% of UK households can no longer afford essentials

I honestly can’t remember if I signed-up to their mailing list or if they just email every councillor, but once a month I get an email from ASDA analysing changes in household incomes and expenditure.

For all the times politicians have been caught-out by being asked the price of a pint of milk, knowing it costs 95p from the Co-op doesn’t really doesn’t deliver any genuine understanding of the overall pressures households are facing.

For ASDA, understanding the pressures families are facing enables them to assess the impact upon their sales and optimise their retail offer. Governments should make no less effort to understand the pressures households are under and how best to respond.

The scale of what people are facing is made very clear in the latest bulletin, with inflation and wage stagnation meaning that 11m UK households are now unable to even cover the cost of basic essentials (accommodation, energy, clothing and food), coming up short by an average £72 per week.

Obviously, this is unsustainable, but our Government has as of yet failed to produce any clear plan on how the gap can be closed. Indeed, in opposing union action to reduce the real terms cuts most workers are facing, they are actively making the problem worse. The foremost duty of a Government is to ensure that the basic needs of their people are met, the Conservatives are failing in this duty.