Dear Editor
I cannot thank you enough for your ongoing support over the years for 3.8 million UK taxpayers who were excluded from parity of Covid-19 financial support by the previous government.
There are so many ExcludedUK members, like me, who are still far from recovered from the pandemic and are still struggling to claw their way back from the financial devastation of having to cope without the financial support schemes that 90 per cent of the UK workforce received.
ExcludedUK have been campaigning for fair and equal support for nearly five years, all to no avail, and we are now looking to the new government to ensure our members do not fall further into financial ruin with any more unaffordable ‘squeezes’.
We are not just talking about things being ‘tight’. Sadly, the Member Welfare team at ExcludedUK recently dealt with four attempted suicides recently as a direct result of members not being able to afford their Bounce Back Loan repayments. Just a reminder that these were loans that the then Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, boasted were to support businesses to ‘bounce back’ from the effects of the pandemic on the economy.
What we need to reinforce is the fact that these loans are not the grants or furlough with which the rest of the UK workforce were provided and that they did not need to pay back. Businesses and PAYE freelancers who had already been decimated by the pandemic are having to make loan payments, on top of all the increased costs that every business has had to absorb, whether they had been supported during the pandemic or not.
Quite apart from attempted suicides due to being crippled by bounce back loans, we also know of businesses closing every week, individuals having to declare themselves bankrupt and houses being repossessed as people have been unable to recover financially.
Many are also impacted by the national cost-of-living crisis and increases in fuel costs: we have members who have not been heating their homes as they are unable to afford it, families who are barely managing on foodbank supplies, especially those with food allergies or intolerances who might not always be catered for due to lack of suitable donations, and we also have many members who are WASPI women and with this Government taking away the Winter Fuel Allowance, it will ultimately end up with them falling deeper and deeper into poverty and debt.
ExcludedUK have sent many emails to the PM Keir Starmer and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, before her budget announcement on 30 October, in which we called for her to:
– Ensure that there are no additional financial burdens on those who are already struggling to pay Bounce Back Loans or other loans/debt as a direct result of the pandemic
– Promise that some of the money that is recovered by the Covid Corruption Commissioner is ringfenced to provide the fair and equal support that the other 90 per cent of the UK workforce received during the Covid-19 pandemic
– Reassure ExcludedUK that the new Labour Government will work with them to achieve the three requests from the membership, namely:
(1) An apology from the government so this injustice is recognised, and assurance that it will never happen again;
(2) Parity of support
(3) Acknowledgement of loss of earnings/profit and consequential loss
The outcomes of these efforts is exactly the same as the responses that we got over the years from the last Conservative Government: IGNORED.
Over the last month, as per every year since I was denied any sort of financial support as a PAYE freelancer in live events, I have been lobbying MPs outside the Labour/Lib Dem and Conservative conferences and I am always outside Parliament and Downing Street pleading with politicians to make a stand to the government.
Outside all the Party conferences in September, many MPs came forward to hold my placards, saying that they fully support the calls for financial restitution, and even after this nothing has come from it, as not one MP has even mentioned #ExcludedUK in Parliament.
All politicians know too well that their constituents are suffering, but the majority are ignoring all their correspondence on Twitter and by email. That is frankly appalling. Just like Brexit, the ExcludedFighter is now another elephant in the room, and even when I ask MPs have they been whipped to not mention this scandal anymore, they just look at me tight-lipped.
Back in the pandemic when the Excluded was the biggest story of the nation (as stated by Martin Lewis), they were all saying that this is an injustice that needs to be fixed, and the now Chief Secretary of the Treasury, Darren Jones, said it was discrimination, and 4.7 years on he is also not only ignoring thousands of his constituents in Bristol, but, as I said, we are of no interest to Labour anymore. This can only come down to the Excluded costing too much to bail out, even though it is the Treasury coffers that are being hit by the day with businesses going bankrupt, individuals being made bankrupt and staff being made redundant.
As a PAYE Freelancer in live events, my life is still heavily impacted. After losing my home in the pandemic, I am now heavily in debt and still sofa-surfing with no light at the end of the tunnel. It was also reported in the summer by the independent festival association that the live events industry is now on a knife-edge again, with over 56 festivals cancelled just this year, which is majorly down to the industry being totally decimated during the pandemic, so we are losing work again.
I and another four members of my family switched from voting Conservative to voting for Labour after being hung out to dry, which we now know is a huge mistake after the way that they are also mistreating me and the rest of the community. If the government only knew the anger in our community that is being talked about every day, they might start to engage, as the honest truth is that the Excluded put faith in them at the general election, and many are now saying that they will never vote Labour again.
There is only one party who have never forgotten us, and that is the Lib Dems, and the general talk in the group is that they will now pick up our votes at future elections, as Labour have also betrayed us.
Yours sincerely,
Tim Pravda