THE Quaker Meeting in Stroud is very concerned about rising levels of poverty and inequality in our country.

Some 13million people in Britain live in poverty.

Half of theses live in working families.

Wages have failed to keep up with prices, particularly for the lowest earners.

Zero hours contracts often mean job insecurity and loss of basic employment rights.

The benefits system appears to be driven by an obsession with ‘benefit cheats’, to the point of being capricious and unfair.

There has been a large increase in the number of people forced to turn to food banks.

We are particularly concerned by the widespread vilification of people on benefits as cheats and scroungers.

There is a lack of affordable housing and increasing poverty among private-sector tenants.

Above all, there is a large and widening gap between the rich and the poor in Britain – in income, opportunities, access to justice and increasingly in health and life expectancy.

We find the present degree of poverty and inequality in Britain deeply offensive and unjust.

We see society becoming increasingly divided and fractured.

In political discourse, it has become routine to blame one or another group (immigrants, Muslims, benefits claimants), instead of seeking to build broad alliances to tackle our shared problems effectively.

We hope that action to tackle poverty and inequality will be a major issue in the election in May.

We are writing to all candidates in due course.

We hope that individuals and organisations that share our concerns will join in putting real and effective pressure on our politicians for action.

Frank Bonner Clerk

Stroud Quakers

Stroud