One in four Britons skip meals due to inflation, survey shows

The cost-of-living squeeze in Britain has led to two in three people in the country turning off their heating, almost half are driving less or changing supermarkets and just over a quarter say they have skipped meals, a survey showed.

Among people on lower incomes, one in three people say they have missed meals recently because of the surge in inflation, polling firm Ipsos said on Tuesday.

Concern about inflation is at a 30-year high and most Britons expect to see increases in the costs of essentials over the next six months, it said.

“Given the economic forecasts there may well be more anxiety on the horizon,” Gideon Skinner, Ipsos’s head of political research, said. “This is going to maintain pressure on the government to take more steps to help people through the cost of living crisis.”

Meanwhile, ONS data on Wednesday showed that consumer price inflation has hit 9 per cent in April, the highest annual rate since 1982, surpassing the peaks of the early 1990s recession that many Britons remember for sky-high interest rates and widespread mortgage defaults.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak has resisted pressure to do more now to address the crisis facing many households. He says he wants to see the extent of the next increase in household energy tariffs in the autumn before deciding on further support.

A separate poll by YouGov showed 72 per cent of respondents thought that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government was handling the economy badly, almost double the share a year ago.

Ipsos interviewed 2,061 people on May 11 and May 12, while YouGov polled 1,810 people from May 14 to May 16.