00:00So today Christians Against Poverty has launched its report for the year.
00:04Could you tell me a little bit about what we've learned as a result of that report?
00:08Yeah, so we've launched the report today nationally and what we've found from that,
00:13there are actually some quite stark statistics.
00:15We do a report every year so we can compare year on year
00:19and whereas a lot of people today are waking up with the news that inflation is coming down
00:23and maybe we think we are seeing light at the end of the tunnel,
00:26our report shows that things are actually getting worse, not better.
00:29So we've got some key statistics that, yeah, 60% of the people that responded in our survey
00:35told us that they had to borrow money just to pay the basic household bills,
00:39not to have luxuries, just the basics.
00:41And startlingly 46% of our respondents said that either considered or attempted suicide
00:47because of the debt that they're in.
00:49Quite stark.
00:50You work in Leeds and you see lots of families in the city facing really desperate circumstances.
00:56Could you describe what the situation with debt is like in the city?
01:00Yeah, so I think we might think that people get into debt because of life choices
01:04but what I see day to day is that people just don't have enough money coming in to pay the bills.
01:10So we're not seeing debts come from luxuries,
01:13we're seeing people struggle to pay their rent or their mortgage, their council tax,
01:17their gas, their electric and it's just getting really dire.
01:20I think it's not helped by the fact that a lot of people are in vulnerable employment.
01:25They might be in part-time work, they're in seasonal work, they're in zero-hours contracts.
01:30Is that something that you see a lot of in Leeds?
01:32Yeah, yeah.
01:33A lot of the clients that I see, of the ones that work, a lot of them are in quite unstable employment.
01:40I often see people in and out of work as well.
01:42We think that their situation is going to improve because they've got a job
01:46and then for whatever reason that job ends.
01:49I also see mental health issues being a really big part of the picture
01:53and particularly employers who perhaps don't understand that mental health is just as much a barrier to employment as physical health.
02:01And so people who are struggling with their mental health tend to end up in more vulnerable employment
02:08because of maybe they've had to have days off work.
02:10So it sort of feeds into a vicious cycle of being out of work, on benefits, stressed, in debt,
02:18try and get work and just go round and round the loop.
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