Huddled inside their cramped three-bed terrace, Gemma Grafton and Lee Stevenson are fighting a quiet battle that millions of struggling British families will recognise.
Lee, 46, works whenever he can, scraping by on a minimum-wage handyman job with hours that rise and fall without warning.
Mother-of-three Gemma, 41, wants to work too – she always has – but transport costs swallowed what little she could earn as a parent juggling childcare.
The Middlesbrough couple say they are watching their finances collapse under the weight of rising costs and shrinking support, while reliant on benefits which often leave them unable to cover the basics.
The working class family were thrust into the spotlight this week when they bemoaned Labour for what they see as preferential treatment given to migrants and asylum seekers, many of whom arrive in the UK by small boat.
Gemma told Sky News: ‘I think a lot of people’s backs are up because they get the food vouchers, they get the free mobile phones, free [school] uniforms, driving lessons, the houses.
‘It’s sort of like a kick in the teeth to think, well, why do we get none of that, why are they getting it all?’
For decades, towns like Middlesbrough formed the backbone of Labour’s support – proud, industrial communities that believed the party would always stand up for working people.
Gemma Grafton and Lee Stevenson say they are watching their finances collapse under the weight of rising costs and shrinking support
For decades, towns like Middlesbrough formed the backbone of Labour’s support – proud, industrial communities that believed the party would always stand up for working people
Now Reform is surging in these traditional red heartlands, with estate streets draped in Union Jacks and St George’s crosses
Gemma, who lives in an end-terrace housing association property, said: ‘Middlesbrough is broken and nobody cares about fixing it. Labour is helping the wrong people’
Now Reform is surging in these traditional red heartlands, with estate streets draped in Union Jacks and St George’s crosses.
That explosion is, according to families on the gritty Brambles Estate, is because Sir Keir Starmer has ‘forgotten’ them while prioritising asylum seekers.
Gemma, who lives in an end-terrace housing association property ,said: ‘Middlesbrough is broken and nobody cares about fixing it. Labour is helping the wrong people. I don’t want to be accused of being racist – I’m not – but I don’t think I’m seeing any help for my family.
‘Everyone is begging for help, and it’s not coming. Nobody gets it. It feels like we’ve been forgotten.
‘We are desperate for a bigger house. This is a tiny three-bed and there are five of us. There’s not enough storage and the bedrooms are really small.
‘They tell us that there’s no housing, then you see them putting people in houses.
‘It’s things like that which are frustrating. It’s like nobody wants to know.’
Gemma, born and raised in the Teesside town, had worked since leaving school – in care homes, cafés, kitchens and classrooms.
Last October, she gave up her 10-hour-a-week minimum-wage job as a dinner lady after the school relocated and her wages disappeared in bus fares.
Mother-of-three Gemma said the family struggle to make ends
She said: ‘I would have had to have taken two buses there and two buses back. So I would basically have been spending more in transport than I would have been picking up.
‘I was absolutely devastated that I had to leave because the kids loved me but it made no financial sense.’
Now she stays at home to raise baby Ivie, who is just three months old, with the family reliant on Lee’s income as a £13-an-hour handyman and taxpayer handouts.
Sitting down with Daily Mail reporters in her cramped living room, Gemma laid bare the true extent of their financial squeeze.
In October, the couple received £2,117.95 in Universal Credit benefits – comprised of a standard allowance of £628, child benefit of £631, £497.60 in housing support and just over £360 in a carer’s allowance Gemma receives for assisting her aunt.
However, with the benefits adjusted to take into account Lee’s earnings, the family were left with £873 on top of his wage.
Gemma said that after rent, utilities, council tax, phone, WiFi, school and motoring expenses – as well as child maintenance payments to Mr Stevenson’s ex-partner, there was little left.
‘There are months we do struggle,’ Gemma said. ‘It got so bad once I ended up on antidepressants.
‘There was a time when I only had enough to cover half the rent because the alternative was not feeding the children – and you’re not going to let your kids go hungry.’
She added: ‘We are a working family, we’re not benefit scroungers who don’t want to work, we’re trying to work.
‘For every pound you earn, [Universal Credit] takes a percentage of that [55p to each pound] so it probably doesn’t give much incentive to work.
‘The people who are not working – and it’s not just immigrants – they’re bums, they don’t want to work because they know they’re better off on benefits.
‘And it is the people that do try to get a job – whether it’s part-time or full-time, or one’s working and one’s not – we can’t have the luxuries that half the people do.’
The burden on the family is only set to increase, with the two-child benefit cap seeing them receive no further government support as their newborn grows.
‘She’s not so much of a cost at the moment but eventually, she is going to be,’ said Gemma, ‘and we don’t know how we will cope’.
Middlesbrough is a town sinking under the weight of poverty. Half of its neighbourhoods rank among the most deprived in England.
More than 50 per cent of its children live in poverty, while unemployment sits stubbornly above the national average.
And resentment towards the government has only grown as asylum seeker numbers rise. ‘It gets our backs up,’ said Gemma.
‘British people need to come first. Like I say, I don’t have a problem with any race.
Cash-strapped families in Britain’s poverty capital are frustrated at accommodation and other benefits given to asylum seekers who arrive in the UK on small boats
‘I’ll talk to anybody. If they’re nice with me, I’m nice back. It’s just very annoying that we don’t get any help, we get penalised, and then they’re coming into the country and they’re getting everything dished out to them. It’s not fair.’
Middlesbrough has become one of Britain’s biggest migrant dumping grounds.
According to figures 681 asylum seekers are now housed in the town – at a rate of 44 per 10,000 people.
Many are housed in HMOs [houses of multiple occupation] leased to private housing giant Mears on vast taxpayer-backed contracts.
Though asylum seekers receive only basic allowances and cannot legally work, the optics sting for locals already on the breadline.
Middlesbrough Council is among a number of authorities that provide a uniform grant, and it also offers referrals to charities to provide tools like bikes, sewing machines or laptops on certain conditions.
The Graftons did not vote in the last election but next time, Reform’s box will be the one they tick.
Lee explained why: ‘They’re for the British people. In Britain, it should be your own first.’
He added: ‘If you’re coming into the country and you have a skill and a trade and you’re paying [tax], people don’t have problems with that because you’re contributing to Britain.
‘But when you just come across and they put you in a five-star hotel and give you three square meals a day. Money for this, money for that.’
Across the Brambles Farm estate, mother-of-three Charlotte Hines is hunting for bargain Christmas presents in a charity shop.
She and partner Patrick Brannigan, 33, are left with as little as £250 a month on Universal Credit after adjustments for his coach driving salary.
With their rent at £750, plus energy bills, food, school costs and everyday essentials, there is, says Charlotte, 27, ‘nothing left’.
The family has been forced to turn to a foodbank twice since March, and expect to return again soon. ‘All my friends go,’ Charlotte admits.
The hardship stretches through the generations. Charlotte’s mother works as a debt collector on commission, but with so many unable to pay their debts, she too is struggling to get by.
Earlier this year, Charlotte and Patrick were made effectively homeless after being evicted under a no-fault order. Despite social workers backing their case, they claimed that the council told them that it had no suitable properties available
Instead, the young family had to scrape together a hefty deposit to rent privately.
Again, the comparisons turn to newly-arrived migrants.
Charlotte said: ‘A family of three who live in Middlesbrough can’t get on the housing list but a man who has just come over from another country can get accommodation.
Charlotte recently secured a job at a care home, working from 7am-7pm each day – but could not take it, because steep nursery costs proved prohibitive.
She believed the Prime Minister had made ‘false promises’ about how he would improve her family’s life.
Across the Brambles Farm estate, mother-of-three Charlotte Hines and Patrick Brannigan, 33, are hunting for bargain Christmas presents in a charity shop.
‘When he is doing something, it’s not to benefit anyone, it’s just to benefit and line his and his friends’ pockets. We’re in a constant cost-of-living crisis,’ she said.
‘We’re not in a third-world country, we’re not in screaming poverty, but we’re all feeling it.
‘Put the MPs on our wage and watch everything change. They wouldn’t last a day, they’d all be crying. But it won’t happen because they like their life of luxury.
‘They don’t care about the problems of everybody else, as long as they’re getting their pay-cheque.’
More than one in 30 of all asylum seekers in the UK now live in the North East.
The region was home to 27.6 asylum seekers per 10,000 people as of
March, compared with just 7.2 per 10,000 in the South West.
Labour has now paused placing new asylum seekers in Middlesbrough and the wider North East – but only after thousands were already settled there.
Local mechanic Josh, 21, who only gave his first name, said: ‘Most people around here live with their parents because they can’t get a house. They struggle.
‘I can’t get an apartment, never mind a house.’
‘I don’t think any [political parties] serve the area well. Nothing changes at all. They say they’ll do one thing then they do another.’
A local woman, who asked to remain anonymous, suggested local residents look closer to home before bemoaning the arrival of migrants.
She said: ‘People here will moan about foreigners.
‘But many of the people moaning about that don’t work either, so they have no right to be moaning about anything.’
