WE ARE STILL GRIEVING! THIS COULD AND SHOULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED! This week is #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek and this feels so poignant as the #ExcludedUK community were devasted by losing one of our members to suicide last Bank Holiday Monday. This time last week, two children came home after a day out with their grandparents, to find their excluded parent had taken their own life. Just think about that for a second... what had been a lovely day out at the seaside had turned into the worst day of these children's lives. This #ExcludedUK suicide, and the other 37 that we know of, could have been avoided if @RishiSunak and the @Conservatives had not made the policy decision to exclude 3.8 million UK taxpayers from equal Covid-19 Financial Support. The excluded were told that they were forbidden from opening their businesses and those employed who were affected, were denied the CJRS offered due to various circumstances, all no fault of their own! MPs... PLEASE show your constituents you care by joining the 'Gaps in Covid-19 Financial Support' APPG. For those interested in joining the APPG as an ordinary member, Labour MP Steve Witherden (Mongomeryshire and Glyndŵr) @switherdenMP, set up and is Chair of the ‘Gaps in Covid-19 Financial Support APPG’ and your excluded constituents would really appreciate you register to join. All officer positions have been taken, so you are invited to be an ordinary member. If you are unable to attend the meetings in person, for whatever reason, this is not an issue as we will email all progress directly to you after each meeting. Our previous APPG had over 260 cross-party MPs and we are hoping to match that with our new APPG. To join, please DM us on here, or email excludeduk@hotmail.com If you are not aware of us, please read on…. ExcludedUK represent the 3.8 million UK taxpayers excluded from parity of Covid-19 financial support, yet they were told they could not work or open their businesses. That 10% of the UK workforce is equivalent to the population of Wales! Also, there were only an average of 500,000 job vacancies during the pandemic, (source data from the ONS) , so what were the other 3.3 million of us supposed to do?!?! YES! This WAS 5 years ago… but the devastation is still being felt by businesses and individuals, YOUR CONSTITUENTS, even now! 1 SUCCESSFUL SUICIDE AND 10 ATTEMPTED SUICIDES RECENTLY OVER BOUNCE BACK LOANS! YOUR #EXCLUDEDUK CONSTITUENTS NEED YOU AND ARE ASKING WHERE YOU ARE… PLEASE SHOW THEM YOUR SUPPORT BY JOINING OUR APPG We have sadly had at least 38 suicides and hundreds of attempted suicides, 10 in the last few months. We dutifully paid in but were deliberately left out! Lives & livelihoods ruined! Website: excludeduk.org There are over 20 categories of exclusions including: ·New starters ·New Businesses ·PAYE freelancers ·Newly self-employed ·Those denied furlough ·Directors paid in Dividends ·Directors paid PAYE Annually ·Made redundant before 19 Mar 2020 ·Directors of Companies not in Profit ·Self-employed with +£50k trading profits ·Businesses ineligible for Business Grants ·Those in maternity/parental/adoption leave ·Those earning less than 50% income from self-employment ·Those whose personal circumstances have affected entitlement to support e.g. pensions, bereavement allowance, carer’s allowance, students, armed forces veterans… and more… ExcludedUK are asking for: (1) An apology from government so this injustice is recognised and assurance that it will never happen again. (2) Parity of support (3) Acknowledgement of loss of earnings/profit and consequential loss. #ExcludedUK
