David T C Davies
Main Page: David T C Davies (Conservative - Monmouth)Department Debates - View all David T C Davies's debates with the HM Treasury
(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship this afternoon, Mrs Riordan. I am delighted and dismayed in equal measure to open this debate on food banks in Wales. I never thought, when I entered public life as a Cardiff councillor a long time ago, in 1991, that this topic would become a priority for discussion. I never thought I would see, in my time in public life, the rapid expansion of centres to hand out food to the people of Wales, on a scale unprecedented since the 1930s.
Of course, we from Wales have particularly strong and often bitter memories of the 1930s and of poverty. It was often said of my grandmother, Gwenllian Evans, a miner’s wife from Nantyglo, that she could spread an egg over Cardiff Arms park, such were her culinary skills of making a little go a long way. My mother, who is still alive today and living in Cwmbrân, often told me of the poverty that she grew up in, in the 1930s, in Nantyglo and the times when it was a struggle to feed the family.
Kevin Brennan
I will in a moment. I am just warming up; once I have got into my stride, I will let the hon. Gentleman have a go.
It is for those reasons that I believe the provision of social security is such a strong theme in the history of Welsh politics, and that the rapid increase in food banks in Wales is particularly hard for us in Wales to take.
David T. C. Davies
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the history lesson as to what life was like under Ramsay MacDonald in the 1930s. Returning to the present, given the hon. Gentleman’s interest in food banks, why did no Labour Member of Parliament ask any questions about them during the entire period of the previous Labour Government?
Kevin Brennan
It is because food banks were such a minuscule feature on the scene compared with what we see today, despite the Prime Minister’s erroneous use of statistics recently at Prime Minister’s Question Time, in an attempt to sidestep his failure to take note of the rise of food banks over a long period.
It is particularly apt to talk about the 1930s because we are reliving that period of austerity economics. The failures of, and false theories behind, austerity economics are being repeated. We might expect that from the Conservatives, but it is staggering that it is being repeated in the coalition by the party of John Maynard Keynes through its approach to the economy.
Kevin Brennan
Indeed. I am sure that other hon. Members will want to point out that, while this crisis is going on, the Government saw it as their priority to lower the income tax of the richest.
Kevin Brennan
I will get a bit further into my stride before I let the hon. Gentleman have another go.
It is no coincidence that the three giants behind the creation of what became known as the welfare state came from Wales: David Lloyd George, Jim Griffiths and Aneurin Bevan. It is particularly ironic that the Government presiding over a policy that is helping to trigger the rapid expansion of food poverty and food charity for the poor are a Government who include members of the successor party to Lloyd George’s Liberals.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
First, I should like to deal with comments made to me directly by the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan). I received an invitation to visit a food bank in Chepstow, but it was during the parliamentary week and I made it clear that I was unable to take a day off from here. I am more than happy to visit it at any time, however, and I hope that that will be arranged.
Of course there is poverty. There is poverty in Monmouthshire and in the whole of Wales. I spent many years in the Welsh Assembly making the point that there is a great deal of poverty in Monmouthshire, although that usually fell on deaf ears among Labour Members of the Welsh Assembly, who assured me, practically, that the place was full of millionaires, although it never has been and it certainly is not at the moment. There is a great deal of poverty in rural areas. I hope that matter will be addressed.
One of the most important things that can be done to address this matter is dealing with the completely unfair local government funding formula, brought about by the Welsh Assembly in about 2000, which has caused a catastrophic loss in income for local authorities, particularly those in rural areas. As the hon. Gentleman will no doubt be aware, the local government funding formula for Wales, introduced by a Labour Welsh Assembly Government in about 2000, does not take proper account of the costs of dealing with rurality or the extra costs involved when trying to deliver goods and services in rural areas, and it does not take proper account of the age of the population. Sadly, those who live longer are much more likely to incur costs on the local authority than those of us who are younger and in better health. If those two issues were addressed in the local government funding formula, it would go a long way towards stamping out poverty in parts of Wales, particularly in the rural areas. I hope that the hon. Gentleman joins me in campaigning against that disgraceful, unfair local government funding formula, which did so much to remove cash from rural areas of Wales.
Albert Owen
I am sure the hon. Gentleman will mention food banks in a moment. He has dealt with the local authorities, but will he not accept that those are under strain now because of the cuts that the Westminster Government have made to revenue and capital grants to local authorities?
David T. C. Davies
I will certainly come to it. I am jumping in rather quickly by not mentioning the 1930s and the Ramsay MacDonald Government, during which time my family were miners, but I wanted to start from 2000. The hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) knows that local authorities in Wales are funded by the Welsh Assembly, and its funding has remained in line with inflation.
David T. C. Davies
Well, one problem is that the Welsh Assembly has found it easy to raise money—taxation through the back door—by reducing the amount of money, proportionately, that it gives to local authorities throughout Wales and expecting them to raise the difference in council tax. The hon. Gentleman will know how the gearing effect works: a small cut in the amount given to the local authority by the Welsh Assembly will result in a much larger increase, proportionately, in council tax to make up the difference.
The hon. Member for Cardiff West mentioned the 50% tax cut for millionaires, a great line that he repeated a number of times. Of course, this came about because Governments of left and right since the 1980s, across the whole world, have accepted—
Mrs Linda Riordan (in the Chair)
Order. I should like to bring the hon. Gentleman back to the topic of the debate, which is food banks.
Mrs Linda Riordan (in the Chair)
Order. The correct way to address the Chair is by their name, so Mrs Riordan is in order.
David T. C. Davies
Mrs Riordan, my apologies.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the 50% tax cut for millionaires several times. That was introduced to increase the amount of revenue that the Government have, and it was certainly not put in place during the previous Government.
The reality is that there is poverty in the whole United Kingdom; there always has been and I assume that there probably always will be. The Government have an enormous problem dealing with the economy at the moment, as a result of the deficit and debt that they inherited when they took over in 2010.
Geraint Davies
The hon. Gentleman loosely referred to the relationship between local government and food banks. Does he accept that the Welsh Government, by paying for the 20% cut that will be imposed in England on council tax, which would cost the average person on housing benefit in Wales some £5, have done a lot to try to stem the flow of people having to go to food banks, and have put money back into the pockets of the poorest at a time when his Government are taking money out of their pockets?
David T. C. Davies
The Government are not taking money out of the pockets of anyone that they do not have to. The people whose pockets have been picked most under this Government are those in the very wealthy bracket, who are now paying more, proportionately, of total tax revenue than they were under the previous Government. I do not follow the hon. Gentleman’s question.
I have already said that there is a huge problem with council tax in Wales. In Monmouthshire, where we have a food bank, council tax has risen more than anywhere in the whole of Wales. It has risen by more than virtually anywhere else in the entire country. Monmouthshire receives less funding per head than any other local authority in Wales, by quite a long way.
The hon. Member for Cardiff West mentioned the economy, which of course is crucial in this regard. He talked about the forces of global capitalism. I was struck by the fact that the economic problems of the previous Government were always said to be the fault of the invisible hand of global capitalism, which perhaps the hon. Gentleman does not support, although I thought that most members of his party these days did. Yet the economic problems that we now face are apparently nothing to do with the previous Government and nothing to do with global capitalism, but all down to the policies being followed at the moment. That is incorrect.
The problems that we have are simple. We owe £1 trillion on the books and probably the same amount again in figures that are kept off the books—public sector pensions, private finance initiatives, and so on—and we have to find a way of paying it back. Instead of paying it back at the moment, we are borrowing £120 billion a year from the banks.
I listened to the hon. Gentleman talk passionately about poverty, and we had more crocodile tears than in the Limpopo valley of South Africa, where 24,000 crocodiles escaped from a farm last week, according to the press. We did not hear the hon. Gentleman mention one single thing that he wanted to do about any of this—not one solution.
The solution is simple. We need to create the conditions that will allow growth, prosperity and jobs to be created in this country. We will not do it by borrowing money, levying higher taxes on people or printing money. We will do it by getting the deficit under control and starting to pay back some of the enormous national debt, which was created by Labour Members. That is how we will create growth in this country. That is what the Government are doing, and they have my 100% support.
Mrs James
I agree. It is a ticking time bomb. It is not wrong to use terms such as “explosion” or “huge growth”. I do not know where this will end. When constituents are sitting in front of me, and we are wading through the complex new rules and regulations, we solve one problem, but we are left with a raft of other problems. I often have to tell people, “Hold on now. I do not have the answer yet.” That is the biggest issue in my postbag. There are many fearful people out there; they are really worried about what is happening to them and about the changes we have heard about—the bedroom tax, the changes under universal credit and the changes to the designation of who can receive disability living allowance—but I do not have all the answers. However, I do know that there will be more and more problems, and I meet more and more fearful people.
Food is not a luxury, but an essential of life. We all like to have a good diet, and we all enjoy certain foods. People are not receiving luxury items, but the staples and the basics of life. Their circumstances are putting huge pressure on their daily incomes.
We already have particular problems in Wales, and we all know about the problems we have had historically and geographically. We have lower incomes. The Office for National Statistics says that pay has fallen by £80 per month on average. That puts pressure on people. There are more cuts and changes to be implemented. As I said, I meet people who are very fearful. They are worried about this poverty explosion.
The number of people using food banks is a good indicator of what we need to do. We need a solid plan from the Government to get us out of this mess. We do not want false promises or denials of what is happening in our constituencies. The situation will not improve unless we have direct Government intervention. That means that we must take responsibility for people on benefits. We should not see them as an easy and quick way of saving money. We must think not necessarily of inflating people’s quality of life and standard of living, but about ensuring that people receive a decent basic wage and decent basic income.
Every day I hear about constituents losing their jobs, or about benefits that have been delayed or crisis loans failing to appear. As I have said, the changes to the welfare system are huge and will have far-reaching effects. We have a maze of new rules and regulations to go through. I am working at the moment with other bodies—the local authority, charities and Citizens Advice. We are all picking our way through and trying to come up with something practical for our constituents. No sooner do we get to the bottom of things than more changes are made.
I echo a question that has already been put: is that what we want in modern Britain? I do not want to be melodramatic and talk about Victorian soup kitchens and going back to handouts–
Chris Evans
The hon. Gentleman has summed up my absolute frustration with the House since I came into this place. All those on the Government Benches seem to want to do is look into the past and blame the Labour Government for everything. I simply ask him to put himself in this position: if tonight someone cannot afford to feed his family, because he finds that he has no food and that his children are screaming for food, will they care whose fault it is? What they care about is where their next meal is coming from. Often in this House, we look more interested in trying to win cheap political points than in bringing about real political change for people who are suffering.
David T. C. Davies
Instead of emotion, I am looking forward to something I have not heard so far, which is someone telling us what exactly Labour policy would be. How much extra would a Labour Government borrow? How much extra money would they print? What would they add to the national debt to spend money and resolve the problem?
Chris Evans
Were the hon. Gentleman to let me carry on with my speech, rather than intervening in my first couple of minutes, I might have been able to develop that argument. Surely it is a damning indictment of any Government when food banks increase threefold; 22,000 meals were provided by food banks in Gwent in the past year. That is equivalent to a third of the people living in my constituency. Food banks are a damning indictment of Government policies, but they are only a symptom of Government policies.
I had a briefing recently from Caerphilly borough council’s housing department, in which we talked about the effect of the bedroom tax. Single parents whose child is not living with them will not be able to have the child stay over with them. Disabled people will have to leave their homes, even though they have made adjustments, because they have an extra bedroom; otherwise, it will cost them £91 extra, which will have an effect on what they can spend on utilities and food. They are being driven to food banks.
I remember the Welfare Reform Bill going through; everyone was labelled a scrounger just because they were claiming benefits, even though six in 10 people in work are claiming benefits. That is happening an awful lot. We are not talking about the people we might traditionally think of—the ones talked about by my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden), such as drug addicts or alcoholics who need food. We are talking about people in work, and that is a damning indictment. Unless there is some change, we are writing off another generation.
I grew up in the ’80s; my father left home when I was 11 and my mother brought me up as a single parent. I could list the things my mother would do with a tin of corned beef to feed us throughout the week; we had corned beef fritters, corned beef stew, and corned beef pie. She even made bread-and-butter pudding out of sandwiches that we had not eaten. Yet she was not faced with the problems that people face now. It is all very well to quote statistics, and it is easy to do that, but what does it mean for children going to school hungry? They are being written off before they even start. They do not have the tools intellectually, because they are too hungry to do school work.
We need to think about radical solutions. Rather than pigeonholing people as benefit scroungers, let us talk about individual need. If I find myself out of work, I have different needs from someone who has not worked for a long time. It is no good the Government saying, “We need to make cuts.” The hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) thinks that we need to make more cuts and that the Government are on the right path— he is nodding away—but if we cut someone’s job, we increase the welfare bill. If we cut the welfare bill through welfare reform, we are putting pressure on charities and others who are helping with handouts. Sooner or later, whether the Government like it or not, someone will have to pick up the bill when the charity has gone under or when the volunteer cannot do the work any more. It will be left to the Government to pick it up.
I would like to have developed the argument further, but someone else wants to speak, so I will give them the last five minutes.
Stephen Crabb
No, I will not. I may not have been doing my research as fully as I should, but I could not find a single Labour MP who raised food banks as an issue on the Floor of the House of Commons before the coalition Government came into office. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Cardiff West says from a sedentary position that it was not an issue. Well, questions were being asked by my hon. Friends the Members for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) and for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), as well as a certain individual called Dai Davies, representing the south Wales seat of Blaenau Gwent. He asked a question about food banks during the previous Government, and some Labour Members will recall how viciously that individual was treated by members of the Welsh Labour party in recent years.
Food banks were very much an issue under the previous Government. However, the conspiracy of silence that existed around food banks extended beyond this place to Jobcentre Plus, because one thing that Labour Ministers refused to do was allow Jobcentre Plus advisers to signpost people facing particular financial need to use food banks. That is something that we changed. In 2011, we altered the guidance to allow Jobcentre Plus advisers to refer people and advertise the services of food banks. Among the underlying causes and reasons for the expansion in the use of food banks in recent years, one reason is that, in contrast to the previous Labour Government, we see them, up front and unashamedly, as a good thing, and we encourage people who are facing points of financial crisis in their lives to use them.
The hon. Member for Cardiff West mentioned a “cost of living crisis”. He used that phrase several times, and it was picked up by other hon. Members as the reason for the expansion in the use of food banks. Of course, that is true. People use food banks because they face a financial crisis at that time. I have met people who use them for a whole variety of reasons: some are young, homeless people; some are struggling with addictions, and they are spending money as a result of addictive behaviours that they are seeking to address; and some are victims of domestic violence who find that they have to flee their family home—they are fleeing an abusive relationship and need that extra support. People use the resources for a variety of different reasons.
I do not want to spend too much time picking holes in the remarks made by the hon. Member for Cardiff West, but he did say, slightly patronisingly, that he suspected that the Minister would stand up and say that he has visited a food bank. Well, I have actually. In fact, I served as a trustee on a charity that ran food banks. The charity set up its food bank in 2008, and its services have expanded. It now provides not only food but a basic bank of clothing, because as hon. Members have rightly said, people face a whole range of financial needs. As well as that, it runs an annual toy appeal to ensure that the poorest families in Pembrokeshire, in my constituency, are able to have a Christmas for their children.
The charity was founded by some of the Churches, and I know that the hon. Members for Newport East (Jessica Morden) and for Llanelli (Nia Griffith), among others, have mentioned different Churches and faith-based organisations that are behind the creation of food banks in their constituencies. I would like to pay my own tribute on the record to the volunteers and people who work in those organisations, because they are doing a fantastic job. When I speak to them, the last thing they want is to be dragged into a party political football match. This issue is bigger and more important than that. We could have had a sensible debate this afternoon about the social needs in Wales, and the role that charities and third sector organisations can play. It is really disappointing that the debate was reduced to a party political argument, when it could have been so different.
David T. C. Davies
I am grateful for the way that the Minister is putting his points across. Does he agree that many volunteers across Wales will be utterly horrified by the way in which they have been portrayed and politicised by the tone of the debate? Instead of trying to use food banks as a reason for having a go at Government policies that are widely supported, we should all be supporting those volunteers who have been there for many years, and will be there long after this and other Governments have finished.
Stephen Crabb
My hon. Friend expresses himself extremely well, as ever.
Let us look at the context for Wales. The hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) mentioned the underlying economic context for Wales. It is true that Wales has suffered from low wages, but it is not true that wages continue to decline relative to the rest of the UK. If we look at the most recent wage data for Wales, the increase is sharper than for the UK average. That is only a small set of data, but it gives us reason for optimism that we can, over time, close the wage gap and see more families in Wales taking home more real-terms pay from their jobs.