Food Banks

Catherine McKinnell Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

Now that I have set the scene, I give way to the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell).

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

My constituency office took a phone call from an ex-serviceman yesterday who is now thankfully in receipt of a war pension, disability living allowance and employment and support allowance. However, while he was waiting for four weeks for Atos to deal with his appeal, he had to use a food bank. Does the Minister agree that that is an absolute disgrace?

[Esther McVey]

We have hardship payments and support payments. We have put in a new element of reconsideration to make the process quicker. The speed of the transaction for getting benefits has increased by six percentage points.

Let us not get away from how this started under Labour. What each and every one of us does is important. I have heard nothing from Opposition Members about the news that, because of our welfare-to-work programme, 30 million people are in jobs today. We know that under Labour, the number of households with nobody working doubled—[Interruption.]