Stripping much needed help from those who need it the most, slapping workers with a tax hike and letting a supply chain crisis get out of hand is going to make for a difficult Christmas for the hardest pressed in Blackburn.

For quite a few families across the country, especially in communities like Blackburn, winter can sometimes mean having to make tough choices about the household budget. This winter, millions of families will struggle even more to make ends meet, being forced to choose between heating their homes over Christmas or putting food on the table.

I’ve heard from families who have had a tough time over the last 20 months, for such families the £20-a-week universal credit uplift has been an important lifeline. Constituents have spoken about the peace of mind they’ve had being able to do more with what would be an extra £1,000 in the yearly kitty; not having to make the devastating trade-offs between feeding their children or putting money on the gas.

40% of those who are on Universal Credit and that received the uplift during the pandemic are some of the hardest working members of our society, amongst them are the keyworkers – nurses, care workers, supermarket staff – that served us and who helped see us through the toughest days of the pandemic.

The government’s decision to pull away this line of support – almost 17,000 families across Blackburn, 6 million across the country – will be devastating. The upwards of £17million that will be taken from our local economy in Blackburn will put businesses, who have already struggled enough to weather the pandemic, in an even tighter spot.

And as we look to a winter that might be dogged by rising COVID cases, a supply chain crisis and labour shortages that business has warned about for months is coming to a head and putting pressure on families as food and gas prices keep rising. The government needs to break the habit of waiting for the things to come crashing down before they decide to act.

We’re stuck in what looks like a perfect storm of different problems but underlying these are long standing problems that we mustn’t miss the opportunity to tackle.

That so many of our key workers and hardest working families will struggle this winter without the universal credit uplift means that we must take a long hard look at in-work poverty and making sure that ‘hard work pays’.