Food, Poverty, Health and the Environment Committee Report

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I congratulate the committee on its report and welcome its unequivocal message that food insecurity is “a symptom of poverty”—which is the focus of my contribution.

As it happens, I spoke yesterday at the launch of an in-depth study of food poverty by Rebecca O’Connell and Julia Brannen of UCL’s Institute of Education. Like the committee, they underlined the importance of food as a symbolic as well as a material resource—one which

“mediates social relations and can bestow social status”,

with implications not just for health but for how people, especially mothers, are judged.

But recognition of the importance of food must not detract from the key message that, in the committee’s words:

“Food insecurity is a consequence of poverty.”


The same message comes from charities such as the Trussell Trust, which has documented the growing reliance on food banks, especially among disabled people and lone mothers, who the UCL research found to be among the most deprived households.

The Trussell Trust is clear that the problem lies not in access to food but in the growing number with insufficient resources to afford an adequate diet. The committee warns:

“The Government should not be reliant on charitable food aid to plug the holes in the welfare system”


which

“is failing to provide adequate support to people in the lowest income groups.”

The committee was clearly shocked by some of the evidence it received, leading it to conclude that

“there are many children in this country living with constant or intermittent hunger”—

one end of a “spectrum of food insecurity” in which people in poverty find it increasingly difficult to access a healthy diet.

Since the report, the evidence has accumulated further. Underlying it is a worrying increase in deep poverty, to which the Social Metrics Commission, among others, has drawn attention. Indeed, the latest official data show that two-thirds of the growing number of children in poverty are in deep poverty. According to analysis by Leeds University, children in larger families and from black, Asian and other minority ethnic backgrounds are particularly at risk. Trussell Trust data show that 95% of people referred to food banks in early 2020 could be classified as destitute.

I have to say that I find the Government’s response to the committee’s concerns about poverty shockingly inadequate. Other than replying to specific recommendations, they in effect ignored all the underlying messages about poverty and hunger. Of course, most of the poverty-related recommendations were rejected, though I do welcome the commitment to the continued inclusion of food security questions in the Family Resources Survey. The most recent such data showed that, even before the pandemic, over two-fifths of universal credit households had experienced high or very high levels of food insecurity in the previous 30 days. Such a finding must surely lead the Government to reconsider the decision to end the £20 uplift in the autumn, as called for by the Food Foundation and many others. The welcome original introduction of the uplift was a tacit acknowledgement that UC is too low.

As already noted, the committee recommended:

“The Government should embed consideration of the cost of the Eatwell Guide into calculations of benefit payment rates … Written evidence from the Government stated that”


these benefit rates

“derive from a review in the 1980s.”

I do not recall that review being published but, given that it was 40 years ago and that UC was presented as such a fundamental reform, and given the growing evidence of hardship and food insecurity among those reliant on UC, is it not time the Government undertook another review of the adequacy of benefits? I would welcome the Minister’s thoughts on that.

In drawing attention to the growing number of children whose families need to turn to a food bank, the Trussell Trust notes the role played by the two-child limit and benefit cap in the increased food insecurity experienced by larger families. In a recent QSD, I asked the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, what assessment the Government had made of the impact on child poverty of the refusal to rethink the two-child limit—condemned by three of the UK Children’s Commissioners as a clear breach of children’s human rights. I also asked for a review the benefit cap as a matter of urgency, as called for by the Economic Affairs Committee back in December. She simply restated the Government’s position without answering the question about a poverty impact assessment. I take it from that that the Government have made no such assessment. Is the same true of these policies’ impact on food insecurity among children? If the Government fail to carry out such assessments, it raises serious questions about their stated commitment to tackling child poverty and food insecurity. Just yesterday, over 150 children’s organisations published a statement calling for a cross-government vision for childhood, starting with a long-term solution to child poverty, which is sadly lacking at the current time, when paid work is increasingly failing to provide protection against poverty.

Turning to the Government’s response to three other committee recommendations: first, I am afraid it is simply not good enough to bat away the call for an urgent overhaul of the five-week wait for UC with the claim that no new claimant need wait five weeks, given the availability of advance payments. The committee had already anticipated that response when citing the Trussell Trust’s description of it as a choice between

“destitution now or destitution later”

and concluding that

“the repayment of advances still creates significant problems.”

Both the Economic Affairs Committee report and the Work and Pensions Committee report, published subsequently but referenced by the committee, reached similar conclusions and suggested how the five-week wait could be overhauled. Given the Economic Affairs Committee’s observation that the wait

“is the primary cause of insecurity”

in UC, and the growing evidence of the hardship it causes, I call on the Government to think again.

Secondly, the committee rightly notes the particular vulnerability of those with no recourse to public funds, highlighted too by the Trussell Trust as at “particular risk of destitution” and in the UCL research which found such families were

“living in situations of extreme uncertainty and insecurity.”

The book quotes one child, not entitled to free school meals because of the rule, as saying the pain in his stomach from hunger

“was like I got stabbed with a knife and it’s still there.”

Thankfully, the Government extended entitlement to some no-recourse families during the pandemic and are currently reviewing the situation for the longer term. In a recent Commons debate, the Under-Secretary of State for Education said the department hoped to report back “soon”. Is the Minister able to say how soon, given that that is a rather elastic term in the government lexicon? However, welcome as this review is, it goes only a small way towards ensuring that those with no recourse to public funds

“are able to access sufficient, nutritious food”,

as called for by the committee.

Finally, the report underlines the importance of school meals and makes a number of recommendations which there is not time to go into. However, I draw attention to part 1 of the report of the National Food Strategy, published shortly after the committee’s report. Among other things, this called for free school meals to cover all children in families on UC, as already mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson, and for the provision of meals during all school holidays, demands which received the support of 1.1 million members of the public when included in a petition by Marcus Rashford, who, as already mentioned, has done so much to shame the Government into action. In their response to the committee report, the Government say that they will respond to the food strategy review within six months of its final report. That is all well and good, but how many more children will suffer hunger in the meantime? The title of the report we are debating today, Hungry for Change, suggests an urgency that is absent from the Government’s response to it. I hope that, in his reply, the Minister will acknowledge the need for urgent action to address widespread food insecurity and the poverty underlying it, particularly among children.