‘Vulnerable Londoners facing the stark choice of putting food on the table or keeping warm’

• ONE in nine households in our capital won’t able to escape the cold this winter as they struggle to meet the costs of heating their homes.

We have recently marked Fuel Poverty Awareness day (Friday November 27) which has highlighted the stark choice facing many low-income families and vulnerable Londoners of putting food on the table or keeping warm.

This could be the bleak reality for yet thousands more who are at risk of losing their livelihoods due to the pandemic.

It really doesn’t have to be this way and with its Green New Deal, City Hall plans to slash household energy bills through low-carbon heat and energy-efficiency projects.

In the meantime, the government need to repair the holes they have poked in our welfare system over the last decade.

It was disappointing to see the chancellor’s spending review fail to commit to keeping the uplift in universal credit payments beyond April, or increase the rate of local housing allowance to cover average rents.

With unemployment rising, and in-work poverty at an alarming level, government ministers simply cannot put off taking action on making our benefits system fairer any longer.

MURAD QURESHI AM
Labour, Londonwide Assembly Member