‘Secret Council’ has no idea who is affected by their own Government cuts.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation revealed that the cuts by slasher Sunak of £1040 per year to those on Universal Credit and Working Tax Credits will leave 5,500,000 families worse off whether they have children in those families or not.

Slasher Sunak’s supposedly generous 8p in the pound cut to the taper calculation for those people working to try and help their families whilst claiming benefit, still amounts to a 55p in the pound tax on low paid workers and their families.

Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that over 200,000 families with children will be disproportionately impacted and worryingly, 6 in 10 of all single-parent families in the UK will be severely impacted.

The Labour Party tell us that in the 140 constituencies with Wards that sit in the 10% of most deprived Wards nationally some 25% of families are negatively affected by the cuts in some shape or form and that this is the biggest reduction in living standards through the benefit system since the welfare state began. In Northumberland areas defined by the acronym LSOA have a number of wards in the lower category especially in Blyth Valley and Wansbeck constituencies, areas that have not seen many improvements in family incomes for decades.

With inflation expected to rise to 5% many families who believed they were immune to cuts will feel the pinch very badly indeed and those in multi-car families are already beginning to feel the strain from the Government's badly managed grasp of the energy markets.

We Know that Newbiggin by the Sea, Cowpen, Hirst and Cowpen/Kitty Brewster LSOA contain the highest number of families whose children will suffer most at this time but many areas which contain hidden poverty in Northumberland have residents who do not know where the next meal is coming from as this Government turns the nation into a series of modernised Charles Dickens novels. Yet the Council has no idea which children and families are affected.

It's been revealed in the mainstream press that the Government has done no research at all into who is affected, how the rise in energy costs will affect families and which children will suffer and definitely miss Christmas this year. Many Councils including Northumberland County Council have not managed to collect the data on children as the cuts to all forms of care bite Councils deeply and the lack of understanding regarding what is protected data and what isn’t is not understood at all by pressurised workers leaving data collection to simply slip by the wayside in fear of making a mistake. It's so bad nationally that the Doomsday book was more accurate than the locked away data sets by secret Councils like Northumberland who operate under massive serious financial constraints brought about by 11 years of Tory austerity cuts and can’t be blamed on Covid.

We're also aware that even though we have two Government Ministers among the four MP’s in the County their knowledge of this fiasco which will turn into a disaster for many very rapidly indeed is almost nil and we should see the portfolio holder for children's services Tory, Cllr. Guy Renner Thompson and his Community Services Partner Cllr Jeff Watson have their very handsome allowances frozen until they can truly say they know who needs help and can honestly say that they have had that help by the bucket load to offset the pain and suffering being piled on those who cannot defend themselves, the children of this County!