A Labour government must put food banks out of business
Christmas is a time of increased financial pressures for most families. On 25 December this year, thousands of people will sit down to a meal supplied by strangers, distributed as emergency food aid. In newly released figures from Britain’s main provider of food banks, the Trussell Trust, it is shown that last year the number of three day emergency supplies provided rocketed by 45 per cent in December, from 92,442 to 133,734. They cite a ‘poverty premium’ around Christmas due to prohibitive winter costs – especially for those on gas and electric pre-pay meters.
In November 2012, I produced a short film called Breadline Britain which highlighted a new and alarming phenomenon in our society: the food bank. The film drew attention to the growing number of people who were so desperate that they felt they had no choice other than to seek charitable donations of food.
Today, food banks are not unusual. Most supermarkets have a collection point for tins and packages of dry food. Most towns and cities have a food bank – 429 are provided by the Trussell Trust alone. There are five in my constituency alone. The latest figures show that in the first half of this year, over half a million three-day emergency food parcels were distributed by the Trussell Trust, including to over 188,500 children. In 2010, The Trussell Trust distributed around 40,000.
The myth promulgated by ministers is that the spread of food banks stokes demand. This suggests that people receiving food parcels are doing so because they just ‘fancy it’.
I have visited a number of food banks across the country and spoken to many people who have had to resort to using them. I have never met anyone who walks into a food bank with their head held high. If you ask people at food banks why they are there, the main reasons are linked to failures in the benefits system. Benefit delays and benefit changes account for 44 per cent of the reasons given for needing to go to a food bank.
Between the financial years 2013-14 and 2014-15, more than one million sanctions were applied following changes to jobseeker’s allowance and use of food banks rose by a fifth. Researchers at Oxford University found that for every 10 additional sanctions applied in each quarter of the year, five more adults would be referred to food banks. The truth is that the government’s own reforms to the benefit system are creating a food poverty crisis across our country.
Our system of social security was designed to end the unfairness and vagaries of the Victorian system of welfare, which was based on paternalism and charity. The conception of social security is as a bulwark against a sudden loss of income caused by capricious market forces or personal ill-fortune. The rise of food banks turns back the clock to those pre‑Beveridge days.
Just as this government’s policies directly cause the rise in demand for emergency food aid, so a Labour government’s policies should aim to alleviate, then end, this crisis. This Christmas, amidst the celebrations, let us commit to a society where no one relies on emergency food aid, and no one goes hungry.
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Luciana Berger MP is a member of the health select committee and chair of the PLP backbench health committee. She tweets at @lucianaberger
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“1945 heralded a new settlement in Europe, and the short-lived triumph of social democracy.”
Very short lived. By 2012, Tory-lite Rachel Reeves was insisting that New Labour would be “tougher on welfare than the Tories” and that Labour “does not represent the unemployed”.
Who introduced sanctions? New Labour! Who introduced the hated work capability tests? New Labour!
New Labour are finished. Yesterday’s people. Let’s get behind Jeremy for real social democracy!
Yes Luciana all true thats why neoliberalism needs defeating and capitalism brought under control as Ed Miliband made clear. Can you tell those in Progress who wish to carry on as though nothing has happened this is what is required. Otherwise you are wasting your time.