“While people like Boris Johnson are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer.”
Protesters marched in the pouring rain on Thursday against soaring levels of poverty in Wales which are set to deepen this winter with the Universal Credit cut and rising cost of living.
All images of the March Against Poverty by Tom Davies
The crowd marched from Bute Park to Cardiff City Hall to demand a reversal in the planned welfare cut and an increase in free school meal provision across Wales.
Organised by Unite Community and People’s Assembly Wales, the protest was also addressed by Plaid Cymru MS Heledd Fychan and Shavanah Taj, secretary of Wales TUC.
The cut to Universal Credit by £80 per month will affect 275,000 households in Wales, over 100,000 of which have someone who is in work. It is set to devestate Wales’ poorest communities.
Around 42% of all households with children in Wales will see their income fall by around £1040 a year.
The cut will mean that people already in poverty will be unable to provide for essential living costs such as heating their homes or buying fresh food, anti-poverty groups have warned.
Organisations that support some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in Wales are bracing themselves for a surge in demand this winter as the cut takes effect alongside the soaring cost of living.
The cut is coming from the UK Government and Tory chancellor Rishi Sunak, as the Welsh Government do not have control over welfare spending in Wales.
But protesters were also demanding that Welsh Government immediately increase the number of children in poverty who can claim a free school meal, as currently as many as 70,000 are denied a free daily meal.
Addressing the crowd in the pouring rain, Heledd Fychan, Plaid Cymru MS for South Wales Central and Pontypridd Councillor, said that poverty wasn’t optional. “It’s the reality of people living in Wales now. And I am absolutely disgusted to live in a country that allows this to happen.”
“Child poverty rates in Wales are among the worst in Europe,” she shouted. “People are reliant on food banks. That £20 per week [Universal Credit uplift] wasn’t for luxuries but for absolute essentials and the facts that’s being taken away whilst we’re still in a pandemic it is absolutely disgraceful.”
“While people like Boris Johnson are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer. We’re back to Victorian times about the deserving and the undeserving poor and this is unacceptable.”
She said that even though it was a small crowd, “There are hundreds of thousands of people behind us and it is for them that we are here and we must continue to fight.”
Image reel by Tom Davies (scroll or swipe for images)
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