Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jon Trickett and Chloe Smith

Wednesday 19th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Miss Smith]

My hon. Friend makes a good point about the value for money that the state would seek to achieve at all levels. Alongside that, our reforms include measures to build the capability of the third sector, which I am sure we would all want to see strongly succeed.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

Is it clear that not only have the Government failed to deliver more public sector contracts to charities, but after three years in office the big society project has now become a shrivelled society, except in one area—charitable activity and supporting people whom the hon. Lady’s Government have driven into poverty? More than 13 million people are now in poverty, two thirds of whom are in work.

[Miss Smith]

I thought the hon. Gentleman would welcome the notion that more charities are getting involved and more people are volunteering. Surely that is a good thing.

[Jon Trickett]

It is a sad thing. In the past year, the number of people dependent on food banks tripled to almost 350,000, of whom—listen to this figure—126,889 are children. There is no doubt that the Minister is a decent human being, but did she really come into politics to increase the scale of the third sector on the back of a disgraceful rise in the number of children in poverty? Is she ashamed of that record?

[Miss Smith]

What I am ashamed of is the hon. Gentleman’s attempt to turn an important issue into a political football. Like many others in the House, I have stood alongside excellent volunteers at food banks in my constituency. I applaud their efforts, their goodheartedness and their contribution, but I do not applaud his blindness to the notion that the use of food banks in fact soared under the previous Labour Government.