Many would happily work longer but opportunities are in short supply, and with hardship looming, anger is commonplace
Emma Mcleister's voice catches as she recounts shopping last Christmas for a present for her two-year-old daughter. "The only thing we could afford was second-hand Lego, off the Thursday market in Accrington, which was £7."
And next Christmas? "Who knows?" She can't think ahead because unless her husband, Mark, a part-time security guard at a local supermarket, is able to persuade his employers, in the present economic circumstances, to increase his hours from 16 to 24 hours, he, Emma and the two daughters that live with them will lose £240 a month from an income that even now barely affords them subsistence.
Emma, 23, has suffered sleepless nights and wept untold tears on friends' shoulders, trying to work out how she and her family will survive. The couple have no car, don't take holidays or buy treats for the children, and have already cut out luxuries, such as meat.
Emma says she is desperately trying to find work, but to no avail. "All I ask for in life is to be able to work hard, own my own house, and have a normal life like everybody else. And, sometimes, it feels like there is nobody and nothing in place to help us."
She is furious with the government: "They are people who were brought up with wealth. They have no idea what it is like to live like everybody else in the country. They probably don't know anybody close to them that has had to struggle the way people struggle every single day."
The Mcleister family is just one of around 200,000 working families living on or under the breadline who will potentially lose £3,870 a year in working tax credits unless they can increase the number of paid hours they work to meet the government's new eligibility requirements.
The changes, to be introduced on 6 April, require families to work at least 24 hours a week, up from the current 16, to qualify for the credits. The switch has been described by campaigners as a "ticking time-bomb placed underneath the poorest working families". They threaten at a stroke to push an estimated 35,000 families (and 80,000 children) into absolute poverty, and exacerbate existing hardship for many more tens of thousands.
For families earning the minimum wage and scraping along on a typical household income of £17,000 a year, the loss could be catastrophic. It is too early to say how many will be able to increase their hours. Many would happily work longer, and frantic negotiations with employers are taking place across the country, but the parlous state of the economy – most of those affected work part-time in low-paid retail and service industries – mean opportunities are in short supply. According to a survey by the shop workers' union Usdaw, four-fifths of those affected said they would be unable to find the extra hours. A separate survey by the charity Working Families revealed that less than 20% of employers were confident that they would be able to offer eight more hours of work.
With hardship looming, anger is commonplace: "I married, I bought a house, I had a child. I did things the family way. And now I get no help," says Sarah, a supermarket worker in Blaenau Gwent in Wales, who is struggling to find the extra hours that will enable her to keep her working tax credit.
Paul, an unemployed 58-year-old father of two and community volunteer from west Sussex, says his family will lose around £100 a month if his part-time supermarket worker wife Jane fails to secure an extra four hours a week. Losing working tax credit would be "a kick in the teeth".
The couple consider themselves to be frugal, hard-working, and trying to do the right thing. Jane says she wants "recognition that we are not sponging off the state and that we are trying extremely hard to be positive members of society".
Ironically, the changes may make it financially more worthwhile for some families to stop working. Because single parents are unaffected by the change, some expect recipient couples to split up – or pretend to – rather than lose the benefit, or simply refuse to disclose that they live with a partner.
"We really want to get married but we can't afford to lose the extra money WTC gives me," says Juliet, a part-time youth worker in Kirkdale, Merseyside. "It's great for [my daughter] Shannon to have Gary around and we want to have a child together but right now it's not worth it."
Working tax credits were introduced by Labour in 2003 to tackle child poverty and "make work pay". The current government is signed up to both those aims, and additionally says it wants incentivise family life and "couple formation" through the benefits system. Critics say the changes will achive none of those aims.
But aside from a £5m-a-year concession which exempts families from the 24-hour rule where one partner is in receipt of carer's allowance, ministers have resisted all calls to water down the changes, which they hope will save the Treasury £2bn over the next four years.
Alison Garnham, chief executive of Child Poverty Action group, said: "Policy after policy of making the poor poorer is putting us on the brink of the biggest, sustained surge in child poverty in a generation, which will destroy childhoods and life chances and drive up welfare, health and education costs for future governments."
A Treasury spokesperson said the changes made the system fairer and pointed out that the lowest-paid families would be £126 better off each year as a result of being taken out of income tax altogether. "If the deficit is not tackled now the impact on families will be worse in the long term, with less money to deliver the public services that they rely on. This has meant tough decisions, but the government has made them in the fairest way, taking real action to benefit families in all aspects of their lives."
• 'I'm married, so I'm in a lose/lose situation': WTC recipients explain how they'll be affected, on Patrick Butler's cuts blog