Food Banks

Anne Begg Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

At the moment, Aberdeen is doing well. Despite the recession, the economy there is booming. There is so much activity in the North sea oil and gas sector that we are experiencing a labour shortage, and today’s unemployment figure in my constituency is down to 1.5 %, which comes pretty close to full employment. In spite of all that, something else is booming: the use of food banks.

The Secretary of State said this morning that the rise in the use of food banks was a result of decent people wanting to help those who found themselves in temporary difficulty, but I do not think that that is the case. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), I think that there is something fundamental going on.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Dame Anne Begg]

I give way to my colleague on the Select Committee.

[Debbie Abrahams]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is a real worry that the demand for food banks seems to be related to the targets relating to social security sanctions? That is certainly the experience in my food bank in Oldham. One of my constituents has been waiting for an appeal against a sanction for four months without any money. For him, the food bank has been a lifeline.

[Dame Anne Begg]

My hon. Friend, like me, has been lobbied by a number of organisations saying that failures in the benefit system are causing much of the increase in food bank use.

If the use of food banks were just a passing phase born out of the global banking crisis and the recent years of austerity, we would not be seeing their growth in places such as Aberdeen. If their use is temporary, why is it still growing when the Government say that the economy is picking up? If their use is nothing new, why are more families depending on food parcels than at any time in history?

[Derek Twigg]

rose—

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

rose—

[Dame Anne Begg]

I might give way later, if I get through my speech quickly.

The number of organisations operating food banks is growing, as is the number of food parcels that are distributed each week. Before 2010, there were some people who required food parcels but their numbers were tiny and the food parcels were a stopgap measure to get them over an immediate crisis. However, in the first six months of this financial year, 27 tonnes of food were distributed across Aberdeen by just four of the organisations operating food banks. That figure does not include the food distributed by the Trussell Trust. Something must have changed between the financial crash and today. One thing that has changed is the Government; another thing is the Government’s social security reforms. The attitude of the Government towards those on welfare has changed, too. So even in relatively affluent areas such as Aberdeen, families are depending on food parcels to eat.

Many organisations point to failures in the benefits system as the primary cause of the increase in the use of food banks. Oxfam and Church Action on Poverty thought the situation serious enough to encourage their supporters to lobby their MPs and ask them to lobby the Work and Pensions Committee to look into the link between the increase in the use of food banks and the increase in the use of sanctions, as well as the increase in long delays and mistakes in benefit payments by Jobcentre Plus. A large number of MPs on both sides of the House—reflected by the large number in attendance here today—passed on their constituents’ concerns to us on the Committee.

The belief that much of the problem is caused by errors in benefit payments is shared by Citizens Advice Scotland, which reports that 73% of the people using food banks cite problems with their welfare payments, that 30% are experiencing delays in getting the payment to which they are entitled, and that 22% are the subject of jobseeker’s allowance sanctions. However, people who have been sanctioned make up less than a quarter of those who are using food banks. All too commonly, people are using them because they have fallen on hard times through no fault of their own. People are still falling ill and losing their jobs as a result, only to face a long delay in getting any benefit. Those delays have got worse in recent years. It also seems to be taking longer and longer to get benefits reinstated once they have been stopped, even by accident. Cuts are also being made to the benefits that people get, including the most pernicious of all—the bedroom tax—and this is all before the largest change of all, universal credit, has been introduced. So things could get worse.

We should be breaking dependency, not making it worse. The Government need to recognise that the increase in the use of food banks is no accident, that it is not just a result of the economic downturn, and that it is not happening just because the food banks are there. It is a result of the policies being actively pursed by the Government. The use of food banks will not drop until the Government realise that and do something to ensure that those who have fallen on hard times are able to feed themselves, rather than having to rely on charity.