David Hilferty’s message to the chancellor

It’s difficult not to have some degree of empathy for the chancellor ahead of Wednesday’s budget. After all, when everything is broken, when everything seems to be in crisis, where do you start?

I empathise because that kind of bleak choice is exactly what our network of advisers deal with every day: people with rising debt, not enough income and ever-increasing bills. 

The way a CAB adviser approaches each person’s circumstances is the same: they first prioritise the harm, and then identify the actions that are needed to find solutions for a better future. 

If the chancellor wants to know where harm is most pronounced, the data from Scottish Citizens Advice network is clear: inadequate social security, stagnant incomes against a backdrop of rising bills (especially energy), and growing debt. 

These problems of course don’t exist in isolation. They overlap, coalesce and sequence each other, leading to devastating impacts on peoples’ lives.

We support people others don’t, so we see things that others don’t, and we know what needs to change. 

I was talking to one of our advisers recently who told me about Callum, who contacted the CAB after waking up with no gas or electricity supply. With two young children and a newborn baby, the home needs to be kept warm, which is increasingly impossible because of unaffordable energy costs and draughty windows. Still awaiting the outcome of his Adult Disability Payment application, Callum’s sole income is Universal Credit. His next payment was six days away, and he didn’t have enough money to buy nappies and baby formula or top up his meter. Callum was worried about his children’s wellbeing and needed an urgent referral for support.

That case of course is just one of thousands, but with two young children of my own at home, this one hit me hard. It is unthinkable and inexcusable that the essentials we all need are so out of reach for so many people. And as a society we can’t go on tolerating harm. 

So our message to the chancellor on Wednesday is: prioritise the harms and address them. She can do this with measures like ending the two-child welfare cap, lifting the freeze on Local Housing Allowance and resisting any urge to revive an agenda of social security cuts.

She can also signal that the government intends to better rein-in essential services like energy companies: a new affordable social tariff and a proper energy debt write-off scheme would make a huge difference to people like Callum and his family. 

If it seems like myself and CAS colleagues are repeating the same calls we make here every week, you’re probably right.

But we make no apology for repeating them here. Because a budget is one of the rare opportunities in the year when a politician can actually make a difference. And these measures really would change lives.

So my hope is that this budget is where we get to stop saying the same things. We’ve had too many years of austerity. In the face of a never-ending cost of living crisis, let’s have a budget for fairness and compassion.

David Hilferty is director of impact at Citizens Advice Scotland.

This column was first published in the Herald.