Tag: letter

Poverty organisations call for 6% increase to benefits

Prices are rising at the fastest rate in 30 years, and energy bills alone are expected to rise by 50% in April. We are all feeling the pinch but the soaring costs of essentials will hurt low income families, whose budgets are already at breaking point, most.

There has long been a profound mismatch between what those with a low income have, and what they need to get by. Policies such as the benefit cap and benefit freeze have left many struggling. Families are still reeling from the £20 cut to Universal Credit last October. And, though benefits will increase by 3.1% in April, inflation is projected to be 6% by then. This means yet another real terms cut to incomes.

The government must respond to the scale of the challenge. Immediate targeted protection to prevent serious hardship is essential, but short-term support will not be enough in the face of ongoing inflation.

The government should increase benefits by 6% in April and ensure support for housing costs increases in line with rents. All those struggling, including families affected by the benefit cap, must feel the impact.

Much more is needed for levels of support to reflect what people need to get by. But, in taking these first steps, the government will prevent the gap from getting wider and lay the foundation to further strengthen our social security system that protects us from poverty.

Signed by:

Alison Garnham, Chief Executive, Child Poverty Action Group

Graeme Cooke, Director of Evidence and Policy, Joseph Rowntree Foundation

Emma Revie, Chief Executive, The Trussell Trust

Imran Hussain, Director of Policy & Campaigns, Action for Children

Caroline Abrahams, Charity Director, Age UK

Sarb Bajwa, Chief Executive, British Psychological Society

Joseph Howes, CEO, Buttle UK

Leigh Elliott, CEO, Children North East

Laurence Guinness, Chief Executive, The Childhood Trust

Paula Stringer, CEO, Christians Against Poverty (CAP)

Niall Cooper, Director, Church Action on Poverty

James Plunkett, Executive Director of Advice & Advocacy, Citizens Advice

Derek Mitchell, Chief Executive, Citizens Advice Scotland

Dr Ruth Patrick, Principal Investigator, Covid Realities research programme

The Disability Benefits Consortium

Anna Feuchtwang, Chair, End Child Poverty Coalition

Victoria Benson, CEO, Gingerbread

Graham Whitham, Chief Executive Officer, Greater Manchester Poverty Action

Sabine Goodwin, Coordinator, Independent Food Aid Network

Jess McQuail, Director, Just Fair

Sophie Corlett, Director of External Relations, Mind

Nick Moberly, CEO, MS Society

Jane Streather, Chair, North East Child Poverty Commission

Satwat Rehman, CEO, One Parent Families Scotland

Dr Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah, Chief Executive, Oxfam GB

Peter Kelly, Director, The Poverty Alliance

Dan Paskins, Director of UK Impact, Save the Children UK

James Taylor, Executive Director of Strategy, Impact & Social Change, Scope

Thomas Lawson, Chief Executive, Turn2us

Dr Mary-Ann Stephenson, Director, The Women’s Budget Group

Katherine Hill, Strategic Project Manager, 4in10 London’s Child Poverty Network

Parents and carers urged to ensure 2 – 5 year olds are vaccinated against flu

Parents and carers of children aged 2-5 are being urged to get their child immunised against flu, particularly as immunity levels may be lower this year. 

Appointment letters are now arriving inviting parents and carers of 2 to 5-year-olds forward for the free flu nasal spray. The spray is a quick and painless way of delivering the flu vaccine to children and won’t give the child flu. 

The letters will include details on where and when the vaccine will be given.

Deputy Chief Medical Officer Nicola Steedman, said: “Flu can be serious, even for healthy children and young people. That’s why we’re immunising all children aged 2 up to secondary school pupils in S6 against flu this year.

“With public health restrictions in place last year, everybody, including young children were not exposed to the flu virus and are likely to have lower immunity to flu than in previous years. I’d urge all parents and carers to take up the offer of getting the free flu vaccine for their child this year and help stop the spread of flu. The vaccine is safe and offers the best protection we have against flu.”

For more information about the flu vaccine, visit www.nhsinfrom.scot/childflu, call 0800 030 8013, or speak to a health or immunisation team, practice nurse, or GP.

If you have to reschedule your appointment, you can find information on doing this in your child’s vaccination letter. 

Covid recovery: Scottish and Welsh FMs urge Boris Johnson to ensure “meaningful” summit

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and her Welsh counterpart Mark Drakeford have written to Prime Minister Boris Johnson calling for greater clarity and substance around a proposed four-nations Covid recovery summit currently scheduled for tomorrow (Thursday).  

The full text of the letter is below:

Dear Prime Minister,  

We are writing about the proposed 4-nations summit on Covid recovery, which you have suggested should take place this Thursday afternoon. 

We are both deeply committed to taking part in such a summit and to working appropriately together on Covid Recovery – but, as we are sure you do, we want the meeting to be a meaningful discussion with substantive outcomes, and not just a PR exercise.

Our view is that this will be best achieved if further detailed preparation is done in advance.

In particular, we would propose early discussion to reach agreement on the following –

  1. A detailed agenda. Your office sent a very rough proposed agenda only yesterday morning and our view is that further work is needed to agree key issues for discussion and any supporting papers to be prepared;
  2. What outcomes/further process we are seeking to achieve as a result of the summit discussion.

Further discussion between our officials – leading to the summit taking place on an agreed date, perhaps as early as next week – would allow for a much more meaningful exercise, and avoid the risk of it being just a PR or box-ticking exercise.  We are sure that is what we all want. 

We are copying this letter to Arlene Foster and Michelle O’Neill.

Children’s Commissioners appeal to UK Government to end ‘discriminatory’ two-child limit on benefits

poverty family JRF

The Children’s Commissioners of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have today published a letter they have sent to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions calling for an end to the two-child limit on Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit. 

In the letter, the Commissioners state that the policy, which disallows benefits payments to the third and subsequent children born after April 2017 in most circumstances, is ‘a clear breach of children’s human rights’ that “is inconsistent with the commitments made by the UK through the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. 

The UK Parliament’s Work and Pensions Committee will today hear evidence from Bruce Adamson, Children and Young People’s Commissioner for Scotland who will present the collective views of the Commissioners in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, that the efforts of their devolved governments to tackle child poverty are being restricted by UK benefits rules. 

He will talk about the impact of current welfare benefits on child poverty in Scotland and explain that even before Covid-19, poverty represented the greatest human rights issues facing children.  

Children and Young People’s Commissioner for Scotland,  Bruce Adamson, said: “With more than a quarter of a million children affected, poverty is the most significant human rights issue facing children in Scotland. Living in poverty affects every aspect of a child’s life, including their educational attainment and mental and physical health.  

“The UK’s approach to poverty was examined in 2019 by the United Nations’ top expert on poverty and human rights who highlighted that it is political decisions by government that are leading to disastrous levels of poverty.

“When Professor Alston came to Scotland to meet with children and their families he heard from them about the serious impact that poverty is having on their human rights. Now after over a year of the Covid-19 pandemic, the situation for children in Scotland has become much worse.” 

The open letter from the Commissioners to the Right Honourable Thérèse Coffey, MP states that the two-child limit breaches children’s rights to an adequate standard of living and is contributing to a rising gap in poverty levels between families with three or more children and smaller households.

The Commissioners note that the policy also has disproportionate impacts on social groups where larger families are more common, such as some minority faith and ethnic groups and in Northern Ireland where families are larger than the rest of the UK. 

Bruce Adamson added: “The Scottish Government has taken some action to reduce the number of children in poverty including rolling out the Scottish Child Payment during the pandemic, however I remain concerned that children’s rights are continuing to be breached in Scotland by the two-child limit on child tax credit and universal credit. That is why we have taken the step of writing to the UK Government to urge that this policy is reversed. 

“We will continue to hold our devolved governments to account in relation to their obligations to respect, protect and fulfil children’s rights, but these governments can only go so far in their efforts to ensure children and their families get the support they are entitled to while this discriminatory policy also remains in force at a UK level.” 

The Commissioners conclude their letter by stating that the ‘levelling up’ agenda signalled in the Queen’s Speech earlier this month must start by discontinuing the two-child policy: ‘With the focus in the Queen’s speech in May 2021 on ‘levelling up’, there can be no excuse for continuing to breach children’s rights through this discriminatory policy that will continue to harm and prevent children and families from moving beyond the impact of the global pandemic.’

Letter-from-CCommissioners-to-TCoffeyDownload

 

Nurses will earn £2,500 less in real terms than in 2010

  • New 1% NHS pay offer is “a real terms pay cut” and “hammer blow to morale”, says union body
  • All key workers deserve a decent pay rise, says TUC

The TUC has released new analysis which shows how major groups of NHS workers will be much worse off in real terms in 2021-22 than in 2010.

The analysis shows that following the government’s decision to offer NHS staff a pay rise of just 1% in 2021-22, nurses’ pay will be down as much as £2,500 in real terms compared to a decade ago.

The picture is bleak for many other NHS staff too:

  • Porters’ pay will be down by up to £850
  • Maternity care assistants’ pay will be down by up to £2,100
  • Paramedics’ pay will be down by up to £3,330

Real terms pay loss since 2010

OccupationPay 2010Pay 2010 in 20-21 prices  (CPI)Agenda for change 2020-21 payPay 2021-22 (1% proposed increase)Real terms pay loss 2010-2021
Porters£16,753£20,383£19,337£19,530-£852
Medical secretaries£18,577£22,602£21,142£21,353-£1,249
Nursery Nurse£21,798£26,521£24,157£24,399-£2,122
Maternity Care Assistants
Speech and Language Therapy Assistants
Team coordinators
Nurses£27,534£33,500£30,615£30,921-£2,579
Community nurses
Radiographer Specialist £34,189£41,597£37,890£38,269-£3,328
Paramedic

Source: TUC analysis of NHS Agenda for Change Pay scales

The TUC analysis also reveals that NHS workers across many occupations and pay bands will suffer a real-terms pay cut in 2021-22.

For example, an experienced nurse or midwife (NHS band 5) will a face an annual real-terms pay cut of up to £153 in 2021-22 as a result of the planned 1% increase.

Unions have described the latest pay offer to NHS workers as an insult to their hard work and dedication during the pandemic.

TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said: “Our brilliant NHS workers have put their lives on their line to get Britain through this pandemic.

“It’s time we cared for them the way they have cared for us.

“That means giving them the decent pay rise they deserve – not a pathetic 1% increase. After years of real-terms pay cuts the government’s latest offer is a hammer blow to staff morale.

“This boils down to political choices. Ministers have chosen to spend hundreds of millions on outsourcing our failed test and trace system and on dodgy PPE contracts. But they have chosen not to find the money to give nurses, paramedics and other NHS workers fair pay.

“Boosting pay for NHS key workers will help our local businesses and high streets recover faster – because their customers will have more cash to spend. And that will help other workers get a pay rise too.”

BACKLASH

Four major unions – the BMA, the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Midwives and UNISON – have written an open letter to the Chancellor, expressing their dismay at the 1% pay offer made to health workers.

In the letter they ask him to reconsider the recommendation, made to the NHS pay review bodies yesterday, that NHS staff receive a 1% pay rise.

The letter goes on to say: “The proposal of a 1% pay offer, not announced from the despatch box but smuggled out quietly in the days afterwards, fails the test of both honesty and fails to provide staff who have been on the very frontline of the pandemic the fair pay deal they need.

“Our members are the doctors, nurses, midwives, porters, healthcare assistants and more, already exhausted and distressed,  who are also expected to go on caring for the millions of patients on waiting lists, coping with a huge backlog of treatment as well as caring for those with COVID-19.”

The unions make clear that the Government should demonstrate that it recognises the contribution of the hundreds of thousands of workers who have literally kept the country alive for the past year and call upon the Chancellor to, “make the right choice”.

Read the full letter

Call Centre Workers Still Putting Their Lives On The Line

Covid-19 still a major threat to call centre workers’ health

Workers call for more action to protect staff

Covid-19 still presents a major threat to contact centre workers and action needs to be taken to protect them, according to a letter from the STUC to the Scottish Government.

The letter is a response to the work of the Scottish Government’s Working Group for Contact Centres and urges them to audit Scottish call centres and ensure employers are following guidelines and revising risk assessments.

The letter comes after new variants of the disease have been confirmed and a major outbreak in DVLA Swansea confirms the danger presented in large workplaces. The letter argues that the conditions in sealed buildings with mechanical heating and ventilation systems magnify the problem.

The letter has the backing of Call Centre Collective- a trade union-backed grassroots organisation formed in response to the pandemic- who have organised a petition in support.

Craig Anderson from Call Centre Collective said: “The Scottish Government needs to listen and take active steps to protect workers. We know there are some employers cutting corners and taking unnecessary risks with the safety of their staff.

“It would be unforgivable, after seeing what happened in Swansea, if no lessons are learned from it. We urge anyone who with an interest in protecting workers to sign our petition supporting the STUC’s letter and keep up the pressure.”

Roz Foyer, STUC General Secretary, added, “Throughout this pandemic one of the largest sources of complaints to unions and MSPs has been from call centre workers.

“The new evidence on transmission and the risks inherent with new variants makes it absolutely essential that we see action now.”

Season’s greetings

This year has been a difficult year, because we all miss our usual means of support, the comfort of gathering with friends and family, Shattering of plans, and not being part of our traditions, etc.

Challenging times often make people reflect on the importance of the people in their lives and the gratitude for those who helped them get through the year.

As 2020 comes to a close, I would like to send you a heartfelt Thank you for all your support in 2020, which we know has been a challenging year.

Our best wishes to you and your family for health and happiness in the coming year.

Thank you.

Kind Regards

Puneet Dwivedi

World of Books and Red Cross seek to reunite piece of World War 2 history with its owner

  • World of Books Group have discovered a moving and poignant hand-written letter from a British World War 2 soldier serving in Italy.
  • The note, written to thank a schoolgirl who had spent time knitting mittens for troops in the trenches, was found tucked away inside a book.
  • During the War, those on the home front were encouraged to knit comforts for serving soldiers, with widespread initiatives run by organisations such as the British Red Cross.
  • World of Books and the British Red Cross are now looking to reunite this piece of World War 2 history with its owner and discover more about the soldier who penned it.

On a winter’s day in February 1944 from Italy, a Lance Corporal named ‘John’ took to pen and paper to thank a schoolgirl in High Wycombe for her small yet valuable contribution to the war effort – knitting mittens for anonymous troops in the trenches.

76 years later, this piece of World War 2 history was rediscovered by World of Books, the UKs largest seller of used books and media, tucked away inside a book being prepared for resale.

The letter’s recipient, ‘Miss Pat’ of Hatters Lane Senior School in High Wycombe Buckinghamshire, would have been one of many civilians on the home front who were encouraged to do their bit to support the British War effort, according to the British Red Cross who were approached by the company for help – and who themselves ran a number of initiatives to get Britain knitting.

The British Red Cross has been helping people in crisis for 150 years, providing support to those who need it most, no matter who or where they are. During the First and Second World Wars, the organisation gave relief to sick and wounded members of the armed forces, prisoners of war and civilians.

It also connected the kindness of those at home to the war effort by publishing knitting patterns of essential items in the Joint War Organisation’s The Prisoner of War magazine. The magazines were for the families of prisoners of war and these patterns could have been used as part of a school project to send to ‘John’.

Items made through these types of activities are on display on the British Red Cross online exhibition, 150 voices. The exhibition was launched to mark the 150th anniversary and features 150 objects that recognise those who have played an important part in the history of the British Red Cross.

Now, World of Books and British Red Cross are teaming up to try and reunite this precious letter with its owner and to celebrate the small acts of kindness from home that provided such comfort to soldiers serving overseas.

Graham Bell, CEO of World of Books Group says: “Over 75 million used books come through our business each year, and we occasionally come across forgotten personal items tucked away inside them.

“It’s incredibly common for people to place memories inside books for safe keeping, whether it be family photographs or letters from loved ones. But this find is particularly poignant, especially as we approach Armistice Day – and is a first for World of Books. The letter undoubtedly holds great sentimental value. We’d love to reunite it with its owner or their family.

“As a circular economy business, we’re focused on finding used items new homes. In this case, it would be wonderful to bring this letter back full circle to its original owner.”

Mezebhin Adam, Curator at the British Red Cross said: “The letter is a lovely find and is a perfect first-hand example of how kindness can keep people connected during a crisis, something the British Red Cross has been doing for 150 years.

“During the Second World War, the British Red Cross encouraged people to knit comforts for sick and wounded soldiers and prisoners of war. We provided knitting patterns to those on the home front and we even have examples of some of the knitted items in our museum collection. The stories of these activities are always lovely to hear, especially from such a personal heartwarming letter.”

If you have any information that could help World of Books and the British Red Cross reunite this letter with its owner or their families, contact press@worldofbooks.com

Letters: BHF needs your help

Dear Editor,

We want to start a national conversation about heart disease – but we need your readers’ help to make it happen.

At BHF Scotland, we’re developing the new recommendations that we want to see the Scottish Government take forward over the next five years to improve care for people in Scotland who are living with heart disease.

We’ve been listening to healthcare professionals and people living with heart disease to help us identify the key issues and work out a series of priorities and actions, and now we’re opening a wider consultation to shape our final proposals. 

If you are living with heart disease, or you are a clinician working in this area, we’d like to hear from you.

You can share your thoughts and ideas at www.bhf.org.uk/scotheartplan or by contacting me at barclayk@bhf.org.uk or on 07471 902521 before the consultation closes on 4 September 2020.

Have your say to help us develop an ambitious and innovative plan with patients at its heart.

Yours sincerely,

Kylie Barclay
Policy and Public Affairs Manager
British Heart Foundation Scotland

Letter: Commemorating VE Day and Europe Day this weekend

Dear Editor, 

This weekend we commemorate two truly historic events: On Friday the 75th anniversary of VE day marking the liberation of Europe from fascism and war and on Saturday Europe Day, celebrating the foundation of a united Europe that would make another war among our nations unthinkable. 

On Saturday the European Movement in Scotland will mark the anniversary of the 1950 signing of the Schuman Declaration. At its core is the recognition that the way forward must reflect an unyielding willingness to live together peacefully and cooperate to bring to fruition the aspirations of all Europeans. Freedom of movement – allowing EU citizens to work, learn, travel and make friends without restrictions – grew out of this. 

We know there is much to be done to continue to realise the vision of founders of the Council of Europe and European Union, including Winston Churchill.

However, we take hope from the European Commission’s global pledging event this week #UnitedAgainstCoronavirus. World leaders came together – including Boris Johnson – to raise €7.4bn to support the ongoing research and development of treatments and vaccines for all, leaving nobody behind. 

The European Movement believes only countries working together can defeat this common threat. This co- operative effort will develop solutions that will be critical to fully restoring our way of life, just as it did in the dark days of the War. 

Yours sincerely, 

Edinburgh4Europe,

affiliated to the European Movement in Scotland