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IN TOUCH – The Cost-of-Living Crisis; Discontinuation of Sonata

TX:Ìý 04.10.2022Ìý 2040-2100

PRESENTER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý PETER WHITE

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PRODUCER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý BETH HEMMINGS

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White

Good evening. ÌýTonight, the Sonata that’s about to stop playing, we’ll be finding out why the loss of one piece of audio equipment is upsetting visually impaired listeners.

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Clip

There isn’t anything quite like it on the market.Ìý I struggle with touchscreen technology, so to have a product like this, which is easy to access and all of the services readily available, is by far the best option for blind people.

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White

We’ll be finding out more about that and why it’s causing concern later in the programme.

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But first, there’s no getting away from the cost-of-living crisis.Ìý Now heightened by the cap on energy unit costs, dramatically rising last weekend.Ìý An added concern for visually impaired people is the growing perception that benefit payments won’t keep pace with inflation when the next round of benefit increases is announced.Ìý Prime Minister, Liz Truss, was invited to offer reassurance on this in her interview with Laura Kuenssberg last Sunday morning on Â鶹ԼÅÄ1.

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Clip – Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg

Kuenssberg

Boris Johnson promised that he would raise benefit payments in line with inflation, do you stand by that, will you?

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Truss

Well, this is something the Department of Work and Pensions Secretary is looking at the moment, so she will make a determination on that and we will announce that this autumn.

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Kuenssberg

So, as Prime Minister, you won’t guarantee, this morning, that you will keep Boris Johnson’s promise to raise benefits in line with inflation because the consequence of that would mean, for many people who rely on benefits, most people who claim benefits are working, that they could see a cut in their income – let’s just be clear about what that would mean.

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Truss

Well, we will – this is something the Department of Work and Pensions secretary will look at.

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White

Nick Robinson tried again this morning on the Today programme.

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Clip – Today programme

Truss

I reaffirm that commitment…

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Robinson
Boris Johnson made a promise to uprate benefits in line with inflation.

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Truss

I reaffirmed that commitment during the leadership election, Nick.Ìý Now we are going to have to make decisions about how we bring back down debt.Ìý We have to look at these issues in the round.Ìý We have to be fiscally responsible.Ìý And I’m absolutely committed to doing that and listening to people and hearing what they’ve got to say.

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Robinson

You’re clearly not – not promising to uprate benefits in line with inflation, yet at least.

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White

Well Odette Battarel works for Croydon Vision advising visually impaired people on daily living issues and she’s visually impaired herself and Odette joins us from a health event in Croydon and from her stall promoting awareness of visual impairment.Ìý

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Odette, I mean we know everyone’s struggling with cost-of-living issues now but just explain the kind of things blind and partially sighted people are telling you about the way in which lack of sight can add to your living expenses.

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Battarel

People are worried, as you say, that their benefits won’t cover their bills.Ìý And they feel kind of disadvantaged because you can’t see the good deals you might get in a supermarket, you know, buy two for the price of one and all the kind of little savings that you can do every day, people are kind of worried that they’ll miss out on that like the general public actually can take advantage of them.Ìý There are some schemes, you know, to help people in different – some of them are nationwide, some of them are your own kind of local council.Ìý So, I would really advise people to try and find out.Ìý And, unfortunately, a lot of that information is online, so if you find it difficult to navigate websites and browse kind of all the internet and the council websites, so, not the most accessible things, unfortunately.Ìý I think that’s where sight loss charities, like Croydon Vision, will give you information, so do try and find out.Ìý I would say to everybody go and ask the local sight loss charity or even the RNIB, you know, is there anything that I’m entitled to.

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White

I think you also had a point about the way people cook, that that in itself can be more expensive?

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Battarel

Yes, yes, you know, sort of ready-made meals but actually they’re quite expensive.Ìý If you can get your cooking skills up, buying a whole chicken and making soup from the bones and sort of stretching it, freshly cooked meals can actually be much cheaper.Ìý You can do stews and with a few carrots, a bit of a – you can make it go a long way.

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White

But of course, those are things that require quite a lot of cooking confidence, which not everybody has.Ìý Odette Battarel, thank you very much indeed.

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Kim Jaye is a grandmother; she lives in Bolton and she’s on a fixed income and she was already struggling before costs started to spiral.Ìý Kim, I mean what effects are these price rises having on your lifestyle?

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Jaye

Pretty much across the board.Ìý I’m on ESA, I’m on PIPs…

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White

We should explain – ESA is an employment allowance that you get, yeah?

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Jaye

It is, the sickness element to it as I also have, apart from being visually impaired, I have several health conditions.Ìý And prior to covid, prior to the cost-of-living crisis, my PIPs was used for my disabilities.Ìý Now I rely heavily on technology, so a lot of the money went towards the upkeep of the technology, for simple things like going out and just having a social life.Ìý When you’re visually impaired you’re very isolated to start off with.Ìý So, it’s important for your mental health to get out.Ìý Now, in the last six months my PIPs, which I used to use for the purpose it was designed for, I am now having to pay off my energy bills, my rising cost of my mortgage – it has disappeared.Ìý And when you’re on benefits you’re already struggling to keep your head above water.

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White

What are you having to give up?

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Jaye

Pretty much sort of everything that I possibly can, it’s just everything is going into sort of the mortgage and the bills.Ìý My sort of food allowance – it’s literally cut to a quarter.Ìý Now I volunteer for RNIB and I teach and demonstrate accessible cooking and prior to this I used to do videos sort of once every two weeks, now I’m barely doing them once every couple of months because the cost of food is so much, I’m struggling to make sort of the ends meet to be able to feed myself without sort of helping others to empower them.Ìý For instance, I have Care Line which is a telephone that I pay for – £25 a month – and if I have an accident or if I’m ill and I’m on my own, I press the alarm and somebody comes to my aid but I can’t afford it now and I’m having to consider having to give that up in order just to be able to make ends meet and to be able to put food on the table.

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White

Kim, what are your fears for the future if benefits, like your PIPs, your Personal Independence Payments, don’t keep pace with inflation?

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Jaye

Frankly, I don’t even think sort of keeping pace with inflation’s going to help at this rate.Ìý There is a massive difference.Ìý I mean my overdraft is now as big as the government’s borrowing, it’s getting higher and higher.Ìý And I lie awake at night and sort of all that goes through my head is there’s another mortgage increase coming how am I going to pay for that.Ìý

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White

Kim, do stay with us, I mean you’ve painted a very vivid picture of what you’re going through.Ìý Listening to that is David Aldwinckle, who’s Director of Insight and Customer Voice at the RNIB.

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David, you’ve presented a – not you personally but the RNIB – has presented a petition to the Department for Work and Pensions about this issue, what are you asking for, exactly?

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Aldwinckle

There’s three key things we’ve called for and the first one is that benefit rates, as a matter of urgency, go up by at least inflation.Ìý The second is that the changes that have been made to the Warm Â鶹ԼÅÄs Scheme, which have the effect of excluding a number of blind and partially sighted people because they’re changing the rules, are reversed, so that all blind and partially sighted people can access that help with their energy bills.Ìý And the third one is an extension to the Blind Person’s Tax Allowance, which would increase the amount of money that blind people can keep from their income.Ìý But also, that that allowance is extended to people who are registered partially sighted.Ìý I think the important thing to say, Peter, is that tracking this really, really closely and hard, we are intending to be increasingly active and vocal and visible in this space with the government and other organisations in the coming weeks and months.

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White

Well, we put some of your points to the Department for Work and Pensions, they told us:

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Statement – Department of Work and Pensions

We’re supporting six million disabled people, including those with visual impairments, with an extra £150 payment, including £650 in direct cost of living payments.Ìý We’ve also confirmed £400 for all households to help with energy bills.Ìý The Secretary of State commences her statutory annual review of benefits and state pensions in the autumn, using the most recent prices and earning indices.

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David, what’s your reaction to that?

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Aldwinckle

First of all, of course the help that’s been provided is welcome but as Kim and Odette have demonstrated, it’s just simply not enough, it doesn’t cover the increases. ÌýWe’ve heard in the news and rumours and discussions, as your clip showed Peter, that the government are thinking of increasing, not by inflation, but by the rate of earnings.Ìý We’ve done a very rough calculation and this is very rough but our estimate is that that will effectively be a £30 a month cut on average to blind and partially sighted people’s benefits, which completely wipes out the help that they’re saying they’re putting in.Ìý Again, the Universal Credit – £650 – is welcome but if that’s wiped by the kind of the reduction – the reduction in the amount of the increase – if I can say it like that – then it’s worthless.Ìý But also, there’s a lot of people who are on benefits who are actually working, amongst blind and partially sighted people, and that’s one of the messages we’ve heard recently is not to forget that, people are working but they’re also finding it really hard to make ends meet.

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White

Can I just ask you, quickly, what is the RNIB itself doing practically to help visually impaired people who might find themselves struggling financially?

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Aldwinckle

So, we obviously have our helpline and information about maximising your benefits.Ìý We are seeing that nearly all or the majority of the calls coming through to the helpline now are connected to finance and people trying to find ways of managing their situation.Ìý But further, we are working across the sector of sight loss and disability with other organisations to unify our voice to government to make that stronger.Ìý There’s work we’re trying to do with retailers and energy suppliers, which talking to the point you were raising with Odette and Kim, where we’re trying to make it much easier for blind and partially sighted people to find those bargains, to get extra help that could be the difference between some people eating and not eating.

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White

I just want to quickly go back before we have to end to Kim.Ìý Does anything you’ve heard reassure you at all Kim?

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Jaye

No, unfortunately, not.Ìý They are kind of saying the right things but, at the same time, Miss Truss is more or less saying that benefits aren’t going to go up at the same rate as inflation.Ìý I would like her to be able to take the money that I have and the bills that I have and work out a budget and see how she manages because she wouldn’t be able to do it.

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White

Maybe we’ll invite her on, see if she’ll take up the challenge.

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Kim Jaye, thank you very much indeed and also, David Aldwinckle from the RNIB and Odette Battarel, thank you all very much indeed.

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Historically, the British Wireless for the Blind Fund did what it said on the tin – provided blind people with radios.Ìý But for many years now, they’ve widened their remit to take in major developments in technology.Ìý Amongst its services – Sonata – a one stop shop which enables people to access online audio material without needing to grapple with all the complexities of the internet, you just need a wi-fi connection.

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Montage Sonata

Hi and welcome to the 23rd September 2022 edition of Malvern Talking News.Ìý

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[Big Ben chiming]

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The effect of the Bill will be to abolish trial by jury in at least half the cases that currently come before the courts and will, to a significant extent, abolish the presumption of innocence.

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Hello, I’m Greg Foot and welcome to the show that investigates your suggested wonder products.Ìý Today’s topics start with a sports recovery double bill – compression leggings and bath salts.

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White

So, just a few examples of the things you can hear on the Sonata – talking newspapers, radio stations, audio books and podcasts.

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But now, the fund has announced that the Sonata service will no longer be available from the end of this month, to the considerable disappointment of users like Kim °¿â€™N±ð¾±±ô.

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Kim, just explain why you’re so upset about this.

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°¿â€™N±ð¾±±ô

Well, I’ve been a Sonata user for several years now and I just thought it was such a wonderful one stop shop place where all of the services you’ve just listed were available.Ìý There isn’t really one provider that will provide all of these services for blind and partially sighted people.

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White

To be fair, the fund did announce this earlier this year, hasn’t that given you time, perhaps, to look for alternatives?

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°¿â€™N±ð¾±±ô

Well, the fund gave us a message in February, so, that would have been plenty of time if we had known the details.Ìý Basically, what we were told was that Sonata was stopping in October and they were looking forward to discussing further developments with us as the months went on.Ìý So, that gave us the impression that we should hang on because buying new kit from other providers would be costly and we were left with the impression that another service would be on the way.Ìý Then we received another message in August, saying that the service was still ending in October and there was only an app to replace Sonata and that was basically the service we would have to move over to.

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White

And, presumably, just before I bring in the fund, I mean part of the point is that for quite a lot of visually impaired people, getting online is tricky and technologically a bit messy, compared to this which is very simple.

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°¿â€™N±ð¾±±ô

Absolutely, I mean I struggle with touchscreen technology, so to have a product like this, which is easy to access and all of the services readily available, is by far the best option for blind people.

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White

Let me bring in Jenny Cameron, who speaks for the fund.Ìý I mean why does the Sonata have to stop, given that you can see how very useful it is to people like Kim?

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Cameron

Yeah, I mean the Sonata service is – obviously, it’s made a huge impact on people’s lives over the time that it’s been running and we know that, we’ve spoken to people who have said it’s a lifeline.Ìý The problem is the technology that underpins this device is now about 12 years old and that is a lifetime in technological terms and really it’s come down to viability, you know, this technology in 2022 – it’s simply not viable.Ìý We don’t have parts to fix these machines as time goes on, they’re essentially giving up the ghost.Ìý It’s heart-breaking when we hear from people who say – we’re going to be left without anything here.Ìý And over the years, as we’ve been exploring and scoping this, and looking to future proof our service, we’ve been exploring every possible opportunity and it just comes down to the fact that the nuts and bolts of these machines, they’re simply not affordable in 2022 and a like for like replacement just simply isn’t viable.

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White

Can I ask you – what about Kim’s point, that although you told people that this was going to happen, she feels she couldn’t really make a decision because of perhaps a lack of clarity about it about what alternatives there might be, what other equipment she might invest in and she didn’t want to invest in something if you were going to come up with an answer because this stuff’s expensive isn’t it?

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Cameron

It’s expensive and it leaves people in a difficult position.Ìý We’ve tried to speak to as many people as possible to kind of talk to them about what kinds of alternatives are available and obviously, we’ve mentioned the mobile phone apps, there are also other things on the market like Alexa’s.Ìý I know that there are challenges with some of these technologies but what we see British Wireless for the Blind Fund’s role as is finding a way to navigate that journey with people.Ìý So, I’m sorry if Kim feels she didn’t have that chance to have that in depth discussion but I hope that that’s something that we can continue to do now and I know that’s something we’ve done now with the majority of our Sonata users.

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White

Can I ask Kim – what are you planning to do?

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°¿â€™N±ð¾±±ô

I have invested in a mobile phone, that has meant paying another £27 a month for a phone contract, which I otherwise didn’t need…

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White

And this is a smartphone, not just a bog-standard mobile phone, you need a smartphone really to do this?

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°¿â€™N±ð¾±±ô

Yes.Ìý As far as radio stations go, the phone really only copes with UK stations, it’s not too good for global stations, so I have invested in a mainstream internet radio as well.

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White

Can I ask you how much that’s going to cost you?

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°¿â€™N±ð¾±±ô

That was around £200.

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White

Right.Ìý We will have to leave it there but we’d like to know what other people think about this, it’s raised a lot of issues that we will stay with on the programme.

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Kim °¿â€™N±ð¾±±ô, Jenny Cameron – thank you both very much.

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And that’s it for today.Ìý As always, we welcome your comments on anything you’ve heard on tonight’s programme, whether about the loss of Sonata or indeed how you’re dealing with the cost of living.Ìý You can email intouch@bbc.co.uk, you can leave your voice messages on 0161 8361338 or you can go to our website bbc.co.uk/intouch.Ìý From me, Peter White, producer Beth Hemmings and studio managers Amy Brennan and Simon Highfield, goodbye.

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