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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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“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.”
