‘I don’t know how we will survive’ – fears over benefit cuts and cost of living in chancellor’s Leeds constituency
As Rachel Reeves made her spring statement, opposition to the spending cuts was being spelt out on the ground in her constituency, literally.
The voters of Leeds West and Pudsey sent the chancellor to Westminster with a majority of 12,000 last summer, support she perhaps can no longer take for granted after rewriting spending plans to meet self-imposed rules she can never have intended to break.
In appropriately seasonal sunshine, disability campaigners gathered in the shadow of gold and silver cladding of the city’s John Lewis.
Politics latest: Reeves vows to ‘never’ again deliver budget like last one
On the pavement, one wrote in chalk, “Welfare not warfare”, expressing the disbelief some have at benefits being cut as defence spending goes up.
The chancellor’s cuts are a little more short term than that, a means of balancing the books that may have satisfied the OBR but left campaigners furious.
The cuts to Personal Independence Payments (PIP) are particularly unpopular. The government’s narrative is that cutting these benefits will help push people back to work.
Campaigners like Flick Williams, a wheelchair user, point out PIP is unrelated to employment.
She thinks she will lose at least £100 a week under new assessment rules, with devastating implications.
“I don’t know how we will survive, I absolutely have no idea because I don’t have any luxuries as it is,” she says.
“The whole point of personal independence payment is to fund the additional costs you have for being a disabled person,” adds Ms Williams.
“So, for example, disability equipment like my power chair, it’s extremely expensive. I have a bigger electricity bill because I have to charge my wheelchairs. I have a bath lift which also needs charging, and this equipment wears out.
“The government’s got a funny idea about what incentivises people because, honestly, nobody was ever motivated to go to work or increase their productivity by being pushed into penury.”
‘Everyone hit by cost-of-living crisis’
Welfare recipients are at the sharp end of the spending cuts, but they are not the only ones squeezed by the cost of living.
At the Pudsey Community Project, they see the impact of in-work financial stress, too.
Based in a community hall serving 20,000 households across two wards, they have been operating for five years and have seldom been busier.
The project offers a food bank and food pantry, a contributory scheme where people pay for subsidised goods, along with youth activities, lunch clubs for the elderly and lonely, and a busy clothes exchange.
Children insist on growing, even if the economy does not.
Mr Dimery says the community project is supporting many people who are in work
Director Richard Dimery says demand is steadily growing and senses that need has become entrenched, with the impact of the pandemic compounded by the cost of living.
“I don’t know anybody who’s not been affected by the cost of living crisis,” he says.
“We’ve all become a lot more used to things not necessarily getting a lot better. There haven’t been any quantum leaps of significant improvement, just ongoing costs, a lot of them above inflation.
“One of the reasons our pantry, our food bank, our children’s clothes are all six days a week are because we know a lot of the people we’re supporting are in work, either part-time or full-time.”
Economic growth would solve a lot of the chancellor’s problems, never mind the country’s.
For that, companies like WDS Components need to thrive.
Read more:
Spring statement 2025 key takeaways
Money blog: Are you better or worse off after statement?
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What Reeves said in under two minutes
Employing 50 people with an annual turnover of around £10m a year, it manufactures myriad parts used in production lines and finished goods.
They stock more than 40,000 lines, from handles and hinges to hydraulics, casters and clamps, in what marketing director Mark Moody calls “an engineers’ candy store”.
Like every other employer, it faces rising costs from higher employment taxes that kick in next week.
It’s the latest in a long line of challenges that has made growth and expansion a tougher proposition.
“Considering we’ve had a pandemic, we’ve had Brexit, global supply chain issues, the Suez Canal and a few wars, we’re doing okay. We’re holding our own with good, modest organic growth, and we’re trying to stay positive,” he says.
“As we try to manage our business, if we’re constantly mitigating increases in costs and the pressures around us, then we’re not as focused on driving the business in really exciting, innovative ways.”
UK
Zhenhao Zou: More than 20 new potential victims come forward after ‘prolific’ rapist jailed for assaulting 10 women
Another 23 female potential victims have reported that they may have been raped by Zhenhao Zou – the Chinese PhD student detectives believe may be one of the country’s most prolific sex offenders.
The Metropolitan Police launched an international appeal after Zou, 28, was convicted of drugging and raping 10 women following a trial at the Inner London Crown Court last month.
Detectives have not confirmed whether the 23 people who have come forward add to their estimates that more than 50 other women worldwide may have been targeted by the University College London student.
Metropolitan Police commander Kevin Southworth said: “We have victims reaching out to us from different parts of the globe.
“At the moment, the primary places where we believe offending may have occurred at this time appears to be both in England, here in London, and over in China.”
Metropolitan Police commander Kevin Southworth
Zou lived in a student flat in Woburn Place, near Russell Square in central London, and later in a flat in the Uncle building in Churchyard Row in Elephant and Castle, south London.
Read more: How a student described as ‘smart and charming’ was unmasked as a prolific sexual predator
He had also been a student at Queen’s University Belfast, where he studied mechanical engineering from 2017 until 2019. Police say they have not had any reports from Belfast but added they were “open-minded about that”.
“Given how active and prolific Zou appears to have been with his awful offending, there is every prospect that he could have offended anywhere in the world,” Mr Southworth said.
“We wouldn’t want anyone to write off the fact they may have been a victim of his behaviour simply by virtue of the fact that you are from a certain place.
“The bottom line is, if you think you may have been affected by Zhenhao Zou or someone you know may have been, please don’t hold back. Please make contact with us.”
Pic: Met Police
Zou used hidden or handheld cameras to record his attacks, and kept the footage and often the women’s belongings as souvenirs.
He targeted young, Chinese women, inviting them to his flat for drinks or to study, before drugging and assaulting them.
Zou was convicted of 11 counts of rape, with two of the offences relating to one victim, as well as three counts of voyeurism, 10 counts of possession of an extreme pornographic image, one count of false imprisonment and three counts of possession of a controlled drug with intent to commit a sexual offence, namely butanediol.
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Moment police arrest rapist student
Mr Southworth said: “Of those 10 victims, several were not identified so as we could be sure exactly where in the world they were, but their cases, nevertheless, were sufficient to see convictions at court.
“There were also, at the time, 50 videos that were identified of further potential female victims of Zhenhao Zou’s awful crimes.
“We are still working to identify all of those women in those videos.
“We have now, thankfully, had 23 victim survivors come forward through the appeal that we’ve conducted, some of whom may be identical with some of the females that we saw in those videos, some of whom may even turn out to be from the original indicted cases.”
Mr Southworth added: “Ultimately, now it’s the investigation team’s job to professionally pick our way through those individual pieces of evidence, those individual victims’ stories, to see if we can identify who may have been a victim, when and where, so then we can bring Zou to justice for the full extent of his crimes.”
Mr Southworth said more resources will be put into the investigation, and that detectives are looking to understand “what may have happened without wishing to revisit the trauma, but in a way that enables [the potential victims] to give evidence in the best possible way.”
The Metropolitan Police is appealing to anyone who thinks they may have been targeted by Zou to contact the force either by emailing survivors@met.police.uk, or via the major incident public portal on the force’s website.
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