Dear Keir – we stay in poverty however writing to you may make it easier to repair Britain

Clair Pope spent months living in her car on the beach. Tyra Goodwin was a homeless sixth-former. Val McKie lost everything when her husband was diagnosed with cancer. Saf Stedall went to school hungry. And Karen hasn’t had her hot water on in three years.

These are just five of a delegation of people who delivered letters to 10 Downing Street this week to mark 100 days of a Labour government – and ahead of Rachel Reeves’ budget in just two weeks’ time.

Between them they write to Keir Starmer about their experiences of homelessness, autism, hunger, eviction, disability, cancer, migration, foodbanks and the hostility of the benefits system. Mr Starmer acknowledged the impact of the letters this week at Prime Minister’s Questions.

“The letters are honest, powerful and important, and I think they hold up a mirror to our country,” he said, after Karen’s MP, Cat Smith, raised them in Parliament.

They came in from Cornwall to Scotland and many places in-between, calling for a new approach to solving poverty. While each one is heart-breaking in its own way – a story of system failure told over and over in different places and with unique voices – these letters are defiantly not ‘sob stories’.

Each person has written to the PM with solutions that could stop others falling through the cracks. And – as the Labour cabinet rebels over rumours of a stark budget – they are clear the austerity era must now end.

With a staggering one in five people now living in poverty in the UK – including nearly a third of all children – the new Government has a once-in-a-generation chance to transform millions of lives.

“We invite the Prime Minister to meet the authors,” say the letters, gathered and delivered by the Let’s End Poverty coalition, “to hear in person the wisdom and insights they bring, and to find ways to bring the expertise derived from lived experience into the heart of policy-making.

“Together we can build a poverty-free nation, and we are eager to play our part.” Tyra, 23, from West Cheshire, writes to Starmer about her experiences of being evicted as a child. “My mum was left with the choice of either feeding her children or paying the rent,” she writes. “You can probably guess what she had to choose.”

Placed in B&Bs and hotels outside the local area, Tyra missed out on an apprenticeship. “My sisters missed their first days of nursery and high school.” She adds, poignantly: “If it wasn’t for my family, I don’t think I would be here any more.”

Clair, 66, from Lewes, East Sussex, spent six months living in her car before she bought a small caravan where she lived for three years. “I got rid of everything apart from my bedding and clothes,” she told the Mirror.

“I parked my car and lived on the beach until I got a small caravan. I was working three or four part-time jobs. I was shocked that a woman of my age was allowed to be out there on the streets. I was 60 living in a caravan in a car park with no toilet facilities, running water or electricity. My next port of call would have been the pavements.”

Val, 72, from Lancashire, says her life changed “instantaneously” when her husband John was diagnosed with stage four bowel cancer. “I’d sold my house, and we were ready to move to New Zealand, when John was diagnosed,” she says. “I’d been self-employed but became his full-time carer. In two years, all our savings had gone.”

After her husband died in 2007, Val found herself couch surfing. “Poverty is not just about a lack of money,” she writes to the Prime Minister. “It’s a major contributor to stress that leads to mental and physical ill health.”

Saf, now 20, has three younger siblings, and they would all often go to school in Portsmouth hungry because their parents couldn’t afford breakfast. “Keir Starmer needs to listen to us,” Saf says. “He is in such a place of privilege that sometimes it can be difficult to see the people you’re serving the country for. I grew up in a one-income household, mum was very poorly. We were not able to get free school meals because my dad earned over the threshold.

“Some days we couldn’t afford school lunches. I couldn’t focus in school, I was set to get 9s in GCSE but I got 5 and 6s, because I was so exhausted from running on nothing.”

Karen, 57, from Lancashire, talks about hard choices. “People in poverty are often made to feel ashamed, less than human,” she says. “Like all people living in poverty, I make choices.

“My daughter is a nurse and lives far away so I live without hot water – I haven’t had hot water for three years now – because that means I can save enough to go and visit my daughter. I’ll turn my heating off so I can afford to buy her a Christmas present.”

What makes the ‘Dear Prime Minister’ letters unique, is that each offers its own solutions. Clair wants people with experience of the benefit system to help lead reform of the DWP.

Karen wants the Prime Minister to visit the Poverty Truth Commission in Morecambe Bay to see how things are done differently. Tyra wants to see solutions to poverty co-designed with those who experience it.

Val wants Keir Starmer to “believe that ending poverty is possible”. And Saf wants free school meals extended to children from all families on Universal Credit.

As Saf writes to Keir Starmer: “You could change children’s stories – they haven’t been written yet. Food poverty is life or death. “It hurtles you towards an early grave. Could you imagine doing all you did to get here on an empty stomach? Would you still have made it?”

• Read the letters to the Prime Minister at letsendpoverty.co.uk