Month: March 2022

“I notice it all the time, and it will go up again in April. It’s very difficult at the moment,” he says. “Very, very difficult.”

Martin lives in Halifax in West Yorkshire, sometimes on his own and sometimes with his son in the house.

He used to be a forklift truck driver, but had to stop working when he suffered nerve damage, and he has long-lasting pain and anxiety.

He has deep first-hand knowledge of living in poverty in the UK, and has been involved in many grassroots campaigns and projects, working to challenge and change unjust systems that trap people in poverty. He knows what helps or hinders people in his situation. Cutting benefits, needless to say, would be immensely unhelpful and severely damaging.

“Take the Universal Credit uplift,” he says. “That extra £20 a week we were getting was really helping – but then that got taken away last autumn and it put me right back down again. It’s very hard now. That £20 a week was about £80 a month and meant a lot. It meant I was not stressing so much and it meant I might have a little available if I needed to buy a new pair of shoes or something. Taking that away means I cannot do things, so then my mental health is worse, and I’m stuck indoors.

“I can’t turn my heating off because of my health. I need it on or it affects my mobility. If I’m warm, I can do a bit, but not if I’m cold. My anxiety and depression now is getting worse and worse again. I’m stressing all the time, and forever trying to change bill payment dates and things like that.”