Food Banks
Debate between Albert Owen and Tony Baldry(10 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Sir Tony Baldry
The research in the Church Urban Fund report shows that some food banks do that, but not enough. Many of them simply give food aid, which is important, but we need to develop longer-term solutions.
Sir Tony Baldry
I will make some progress.
If the situation is to be resolved, the root causes need to be tackled. In April, an online survey was sent to 3,000 Church of England incumbents. The Church Urban Fund asked clergy in parishes right across the country questions about their perceptions of food poverty and what was going on in their parishes. The respondents were invited to indicate what they considered the causes of food poverty, based on their experience of running food banks. These figures come to more than 100% because some clergy selected more than one topic, but 62% chose low income, 42% chose benefit changes and 35% chose benefit delays. As it happens, these three issues match those identified by the Trussell Trust as the most common reasons for food bank referrals last year. It is also worth noting that some respondents believed that individual behaviour was a contributing factor, with 27% selecting poor household budgeting as a significant cause of food poverty.
Alongside others set out in the report, those results suggest that if churches are to contribute to a long-term solution to food poverty, church-based activity needs to be rebalanced away from emergency crisis support and towards long-term work to tackle underlying problems. In its recent report on monitoring poverty, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has observed:
“Making comparisons of people using food banks over time is not easy, as there simply are more food banks now than five years ago. They may well be meeting need that was previously going unmet.”
However, there is obviously a need to look at the impact of benefit changes and, in particular, benefit delays.