The recent implication by Michael Gove that the increase in food bank use results from the inability of poorer families to manage their household finances illustrates the persistence of normative views of poverty and social exclusion. It also serves to maintain high levels of media attention on the existence and use of food banks in the UK. In July the media was awash with reports of a 200 per cent increase in the use of food banks, up from 50,000 to 150,000: half of whom were referred to the food bank due to benefit delays, sanctions and financial hardship. In the same month, Department for Work and Pensions minister David Freud was disputing any claim of a causal link between this increase and benefit reforms/poverty, and his declared admiration at the efforts of third-sector/charity organisations for providing food banks. This admiration followed Isabel Hardman’s piece in the Spectator suggesting that food banks were a sign of a strong social fabric in Britain.
Rather than demonstrate strong social fabric, food banks represent the consequence of the coalition governments attack on welfare provision. Drawing upon the Canadian experience of some 20 years demonstrates how the growth of food banks has been associated with the breakdown of the welfare safety net and the states (internationally ratified) obligation to respect, protect and fulfil a citizen’s right to food. In Toronto, for example, 90 per cent of users of food banks reported household incomes below the poverty line, with 94 per cent having experienced food insecurity in the 12 months leading up to the survey. On the other hand, a further study found that the work of food banks is reliant upon a limited, variable and largely uncontrollable supply of food. Depending upon good will does not mean the products donated are of the type in demand, or in sufficient quantities. Consequently food banks have a limited ability to respond to the food needs of those requiring assistance.
Increased poverty has clear implications for the health and wellbeing of citizens. The Canadian research raises questions about the quality of food, with 99 per cent of hampers being found unable to provide three days’ worth of necessary nutrients. Although missing nutrients can be found in fresh fruit, vegetable, meat, dairy products and alternatives, the financial hardship of those using food banks means they have no means of purchasing other foods to provide these. Thus the uncertain supply of goods to food banks and the subsequent impact on quality and availability means that this is not just a poverty issue; it’s also a public health concern.
Thus the Canadian experience shows us that, unlike Hardman, there is no cause for celebrating food banks as an indication of the strength of the social fabric of society. Rather the evidence they are an indication of the continued attack by the coalition on state-provided welfare, designed to ensure all citizens are able to sustain levels of wellbeing necessary for participation and survival within society; and a return to patchy, inconsistent provision of pre-second world war welfare provision: a return to laissez-faire ideas which so accurately describe central ideas of the current Conservative party mindset.
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