Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Stephen Crabb)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Riordan. I not only thank the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) for securing the debate, but congratulate him on doing so, because I understand that he was the successful one of a number of Labour MPs who were encouraged to put in for it. What the debate represents, as has been highlighted by some of my hon. Friends, is the latest stage in a political campaign by the Labour party to use the food bank movement as a vehicle for its political attack on some of the changes and challenges that we are facing as a coalition Government. The hon. Gentleman did exactly in his speech what my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) encouraged him not to do, which was reduce it to a party political rant, treat 2010 as year zero, and remove the whole debate from its context.
The game was rather given away this morning when a number of us Welsh Members of Parliament were in a Committee. On the way out, I overheard a Labour Member say, slightly flippantly—I would not put it any higher than that—that they were going to have some fun with this debate today. That is the context for this afternoon; the Labour party is using this as part of a highly politicised campaign.
Stephen Crabb
Thank you, Mrs Riordan. In preparation for this afternoon’s debate, I did a bit of research.
Stephen Crabb
That is exactly what it is about. I did some research before the debate this afternoon and looked at the parliamentary record, because I wanted to know what kinds of questions and issues were being raised on food banks by Members of different parties—not only from Wales, but from right across the UK. It might not surprise my hon. Friends to know that I could not find a single reference by a Labour Member of Parliament, before 2010, to food banks.
Stephen Crabb
No, I will not. I may not have been doing my research as fully as I should, but I could not find a single Labour MP who raised food banks as an issue on the Floor of the House of Commons before the coalition Government came into office. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Cardiff West says from a sedentary position that it was not an issue. Well, questions were being asked by my hon. Friends the Members for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) and for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), as well as a certain individual called Dai Davies, representing the south Wales seat of Blaenau Gwent. He asked a question about food banks during the previous Government, and some Labour Members will recall how viciously that individual was treated by members of the Welsh Labour party in recent years.
Food banks were very much an issue under the previous Government. However, the conspiracy of silence that existed around food banks extended beyond this place to Jobcentre Plus, because one thing that Labour Ministers refused to do was allow Jobcentre Plus advisers to signpost people facing particular financial need to use food banks. That is something that we changed. In 2011, we altered the guidance to allow Jobcentre Plus advisers to refer people and advertise the services of food banks. Among the underlying causes and reasons for the expansion in the use of food banks in recent years, one reason is that, in contrast to the previous Labour Government, we see them, up front and unashamedly, as a good thing, and we encourage people who are facing points of financial crisis in their lives to use them.
The hon. Member for Cardiff West mentioned a “cost of living crisis”. He used that phrase several times, and it was picked up by other hon. Members as the reason for the expansion in the use of food banks. Of course, that is true. People use food banks because they face a financial crisis at that time. I have met people who use them for a whole variety of reasons: some are young, homeless people; some are struggling with addictions, and they are spending money as a result of addictive behaviours that they are seeking to address; and some are victims of domestic violence who find that they have to flee their family home—they are fleeing an abusive relationship and need that extra support. People use the resources for a variety of different reasons.
I do not want to spend too much time picking holes in the remarks made by the hon. Member for Cardiff West, but he did say, slightly patronisingly, that he suspected that the Minister would stand up and say that he has visited a food bank. Well, I have actually. In fact, I served as a trustee on a charity that ran food banks. The charity set up its food bank in 2008, and its services have expanded. It now provides not only food but a basic bank of clothing, because as hon. Members have rightly said, people face a whole range of financial needs. As well as that, it runs an annual toy appeal to ensure that the poorest families in Pembrokeshire, in my constituency, are able to have a Christmas for their children.
The charity was founded by some of the Churches, and I know that the hon. Members for Newport East (Jessica Morden) and for Llanelli (Nia Griffith), among others, have mentioned different Churches and faith-based organisations that are behind the creation of food banks in their constituencies. I would like to pay my own tribute on the record to the volunteers and people who work in those organisations, because they are doing a fantastic job. When I speak to them, the last thing they want is to be dragged into a party political football match. This issue is bigger and more important than that. We could have had a sensible debate this afternoon about the social needs in Wales, and the role that charities and third sector organisations can play. It is really disappointing that the debate was reduced to a party political argument, when it could have been so different.
David T. C. Davies
I am grateful for the way that the Minister is putting his points across. Does he agree that many volunteers across Wales will be utterly horrified by the way in which they have been portrayed and politicised by the tone of the debate? Instead of trying to use food banks as a reason for having a go at Government policies that are widely supported, we should all be supporting those volunteers who have been there for many years, and will be there long after this and other Governments have finished.
Stephen Crabb
My hon. Friend expresses himself extremely well, as ever.
Let us look at the context for Wales. The hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) mentioned the underlying economic context for Wales. It is true that Wales has suffered from low wages, but it is not true that wages continue to decline relative to the rest of the UK. If we look at the most recent wage data for Wales, the increase is sharper than for the UK average. That is only a small set of data, but it gives us reason for optimism that we can, over time, close the wage gap and see more families in Wales taking home more real-terms pay from their jobs.
Nia Griffith
Will the Minister explain how his policies will raise incomes in Wales? What will he do to ensure that the poorest people in Wales have better job opportunities and better pay for what they do?
Stephen Crabb
Every single day of the week at the Wales Office, we focus on the economic challenges facing Wales. Every week in the Wales Office we are thinking about how we work with the Welsh Government to bring in new investment in infrastructure and new inward investors, and see better, higher-quality jobs created in Wales that will provide higher real-terms wages.
Household debt was only mentioned briefly in the debate, but it is one of the key reasons why, in recent years, the number of people using food banks has increased. Over the past 10 years, and perhaps going back even further than that, there was an explosion of personal indebtedness, fuelled by the consumer credit boom, which was encouraged—egged on—by the policies of previous Labour Governments. Household indebtedness has started to fall in the past two years, but there is still a long way to go to see people with sustainable debt levels in their lives. That is one reason why some of the organisations that are at the forefront of setting up food banks are also at the forefront of tackling the debt culture. Some of the same organisations run debt advice counselling services alongside their food banks. The Government take seriously the challenge of payday loans and doorstep lenders, and we are taking real action to change the regulatory framework in which such people operate.
Fuel poverty has been mentioned by more than one colleague as a real challenge for Wales, and I absolutely recognise that point. We continue to support people in Wales through the winter fuel payments. The hon. Member for Arfon asked me to follow up on a specific request to see whether there is a way of facilitating, earlier in the season, cold weather and winter fuel payments, because that is when people have the opportunity to buy fuel at a cheaper rate. I shall certainly follow that up with my hon. Friends in the relevant Department.
To close the debate, I am sure that we will come back to this issue as MPs in Wales, and I hope, on that occasion, that we can have a more rounded, more thorough debate on some of the real issues affecting society in Wales.