What it was like to be at the Cost of Living Action Parliamentary relaunch event in Westminster
On Monday 23rd March I joined the Cost of Living Action (COLA) launch in Westminster as a lived-experience campaigner: a full-time working single parent of 3, whose “decent” salary is swallowed whole by childcare costs alone.
Before the event, campaigners used needlework to express how the cost of living impacts us: an act of “craftivism.” Our fabric squares were displayed at the end of the room; policymakers studied them with care and attention. One cloth showed a ragged net and the words “social safety net… cut by design”; another said “reduced… to this” with the word “reduced” formed like a yellow discount barcode sticker. Other themes included eating vs. heating, trickle up economics, and reframing the welfare narrative.
There is something undeniable about self-expression crafted by hand.
In the whirlwind of kids, work, and life admin, I couldn’t find time to sew. But I’d wanted to. So when I found myself running a whole 20 minutes early the day of the launch, I grabbed my needle and quickly stitched “no time” across my cloth in black thread – dotting the “i” and crossing the “t” in orange to represent the details lost to in-work poverty. Turn it over to see the messy spiderweb of threads behind the strained cursive – just like the tangle of coping strategies I rely on daily, to keep my family going.
We stitched our truths into cloths that can be held, examined and physically felt. That same raw presence continued in the testimonies shared by campaigners Sophie, Laura and Paul.
Sophie spoke powerfully about how growing up in poverty can haunt even the brightest future. With resilience and humour, she articulated how children internalise stress, fear and instability, and carry these into adulthood. Then she, Laura and Paul underlined the moment by asking Westminster together: Why aren’t you doing anything?
MP Yuan Yang, hosting the event, recognised the urgency of a crisis still impacting every neighbourhood in her constituency five years on. She urged that we should have learned more from the downturns of 2022, and cannot accept another 5 years of this. “There is space,” she insisted, ”for a more activist government.”
Lord Richard Walker echoed that urgency, warning of the current spike in fuel costs, “this cannot be another Groundhog Day” for families. As “Cost of Living Champion” with a direct line to the PM, he promised to be a “constant nag”. It was striking to hear someone so pro-business openly call for crackdowns on energy and retailer profiteering. He also noted unfair cost hikes for essential services like mobile and broadband, and families' difficulties in saving for emergencies or children's futures.
I spoke to Lord Walker about his suggestion of expanding access to credit cards. For families like mine, credit is both a lifeline and a trap. Because nursery costs exceed my full time salary, I rely on credit cards to pay upfront and claim UC reimbursement. Credit makes work possible, but also exposes me to the risk of debt and interest when UC payments are delayed or missed. Lord Walker was receptive when I suggested that more direct investment in childcare would reduce fees, easing the financial and administrative burdens on working parents.
In another conversation, MP Peter Swallow highlighted how poverty data misses the “just about managing,” whose wages are decent yet eclipsed by costs like rent and childcare. In-work poverty remains invisible because poverty studies measure income against a theoretical line rather than each family's real essential costs.
If we are serious about “getting Britain working again” we need to confront the fact that work no longer guarantees stability. Poverty data misses the gap between income and the cost of living, yet this gap is devastating families like mine.
What COLA brings to this crisis is something data cannot capture: who we are. Our skills, our perspectives, our struggles – our rights. Through testimony, voice, and carefully stitched cloth, we shared our stories from across the UK.
And policymakers listened. This matters, because real solutions come not from theories or calculations, but from understanding what real people are actually living through.
We are speaking truth to power. Now it’s time for power to act.
