📣 OPEN LETTER SENT TO THE CHANCELLOR TODAY📣
Yesterday Chancellor Rt Hon John Healey, wrote to me regarding his speech at the Labour Party Conference and how he is working to make Britain hope again.
Today, in my roles as Head of ExcludedUK and Secretariat Secretary of the Gaps in Covid-19 Financial Support APPG, I have sent an open letter to the Chancellor.
The message is simple:
The 3.8 million taxpayers excluded from meaningful Covid-19 financial support have waited long enough.
I explained that Prime Minister Andy Burnham has supported our campaign for more than six years, describing the injustice faced by the excluded as “indefensible” and saying that any solution should be “fair, proportionate and doable.”
Now we need those words to become action.
I have asked the Chancellor to sit down with us.
To listen to the bereaved.
To listen to those still repaying pandemic debt.
To listen to those whose businesses, homes and mental health were devastated.
And to work with us on what recognition, accountability and fair financial redress should now look like.
As the Chancellor’s own message said:
“HOPE ISN’T SOMETHING WE WAIT FOR. IT’S SOMETHING WE BUILD.”
The excluded have already waited more than six years.
It is time to build that hope for them too.
The APPG will be meeting next month to decide how to progress with our campaign, but none of us can do too much to ramp this pressure up to ensure we get the commitment that Andy Burnham has promised us for well over 6 years.
Below is the open letter in full. Please forward a copy to your MP and local media. Ask your MP to join our APPG, which they can do by emailing admin@excludeduk.org to register.
Many thanks
Jennifer
Dutifully paid in. Deliberately left out.
#ExcludedUK #Excluded #Covid19 #APPG #FinancialRedress #BounceBackLoans #MentalHealth #justicefortheexcluded
Open_Letter_to_John_Healey_ExcludedUK_28_September_2026 – RP amended – 290926 (1)
My childminding business was forced to close overnight. But as I also had a part time teaching position (and continued to work 2 days per week in school throughout the pandemic). I lost 2/3 of my salary (my 3 days per week childminding), but I was excluded from any financial support because of my situation. My family suffered as a result and we struggled to pay our mortgage and our bills during the pandemic. I was forced to close my business, yet I was given no support to do so.
As a member of ##ExcludedUK since day one that our group was founded I feel that I must share the trauma experience resulting from my husband being left with no financial support during the Covid Pandemic.
My husband was then 54 years of age running his ‘one man band’ Ltd Company. Ltd only because he had to be to be contracted with the company he was then contracted to.
Work dried up instantly leaving him zero income and no funancial support from the then Government.
At that point he had then been a UK taxpayer for 38 YEARS but was deliberately left out of the support that the majority of UK workers benifited from.
At that time we had 3 children under the age of 18 to support with zero income.
We initially felt calm and fairly secure as the financial packages were being rolled out…Until… the devastating day when we realised that my husband ‘slipped through the gaps’ of support and we were left in financial devastation.
I can still feel and remember the impact that this took on me physically and mentally when I think back to it. My body froze and I felt like my blood had literally turned cold. I went into complete panic!!
This could not be true?!!!
I searched and searched for answers until I came across a tiny group of people on Facebook who were in the same position as us. That is when we began setting up ##ExcludedUK and we soon became a huge Facebook community.
We came together to try to support each other and to campain to get the Government to see us and acknowledge us but that recognition never came!
We became a group that no-one really wanted to be part of but what we had been forced into.
Our monthly rental propery alone was £1,200!
We took loans from our families (My own Mother gave us money from her tiny pension) We both took out Bounce Back Loans to the value of £17,000 and I was forced to cash in my private pension early just to survive… Just to pay our household bills and to feed our 3 children!
We are both still paying back our Bounce Back loans and the loan that I took from my own brother just to survive! What an insult every month when our payments still go out from our hard earned personal money!
This, when we saw our family and friends enjoying their Furlough and Seiss payments and enjoying the peace and comfort of support from the Government. Friends who don’t work who still got their financially support from Government financial support payments…Nothing changed for any of them but ourselves as hard working UK taxpayers were ignored and just left to crumble.
We were left completely financially devastated!
Our marriage became under extreme pressure as both of our mental healths hit rock bottom.
The stress of continued panic about the possibility of losing our home as our landlord still demanded our monthly rental month after month and being forced to use food banks to feed the 5 of us whilst trying to keep our children unaware of our financial situation.
We started avoiding contact with our friends and families as we were becoming resentful of their ‘happy covid days’ sitting in the sun completely safe and contented that their bills were being paid by the Government. We just couldn’t take the mental trauma of their contentment at a time when we most needed their support.
Covid itself left us isolated but the financial impact left us further isolated.
The only people that I wanted contact with at that time was our online community as they were the only ones who truely knew the devastation that we were constantly feeling.
Six years on our friends and family are continuing to enjoy their carefree financial situations doing things that we can still no longer do as we are still paying back debt and trying to build back some sort of financial strength.
My husband and I are both 7 years away from retirement. A retirement that once looked quite comfortable but now looks bleek as we continue to struggle to get back on top of our financial struggles resulting from the devastation of the Covid financial impact on us.
I ask you…Is this fair?…Is this just? Do we not deserve some recognition and compensation to help us to lift some of our ongoing stress from this huge injustice?
Please, please I ask you to meet with us to truely hear the trauma and devastation of our situations.
Kind Regards
Julie Convy.