Food Banks

Debate between David Wright and John Hemming

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

I have visited the new food bank in my constituency and the one in Sparkhill, just outside my constituency. Both are Trussell Trust food banks and both do excellent work. I congratulate the people who work in them. I have done welfare rights for about 25 years, and I am pleased to have the opportunity to send people in crisis somewhere where they can get emergency food aid.

The Trussell Trust website tells us how the trust was founded in 1997 and how food banks were born in 2000. It tells how the founder, Paddy Henderson, received a call in 2000

“from a desperate mother in Salisbury saying ‘my children are going to bed hungry tonight—what are you going to do about it?’ Paddy investigated local indices of deprivation and ‘hidden hunger’ in the UK. The shocking results showed that significant numbers of local people faced short term hunger as a result of a sudden crisis.”

This problem is not new, but the fact that there are now food banks is a positive thing.

[David Wright]

I think we would all acknowledge that there has always been a problem with people and families going hungry in this country. It is nothing new, but how does the hon. Gentleman explain the huge increase in the number of people presenting at food banks in recent years?

[John Hemming]

One aspect of that is that people such as myself who were unable to refer anyone to a food bank before can now do so. I have always seen people in a state of crisis—[Interruption.] No, I have seen people in a state of crisis, and the Trussell Trust also confirms that this was happening in 2000.

Let us look at an example involving habitual residency. I think that the House is united in not wanting benefit tourism. However, when people leave this country to go and live abroad for five or 10 years and then come back, they do not qualify for benefits because they have not been habitually resident here. They then come to see me and I tell them that, in such an emergency, I can send them down to the food bank. I have handed out vouchers to four people. It is true that some people end up in such a state that they cannot afford to cook the food, and that is something that we need to be aware of. They often do not want to go to the food bank for that reason. Similarly, the cost of the bus fare to the food bank can also be an issue. We have to recognise, however, that the habitual residency rule is not new. It has been around for some time. The Trussell Trust refers to “hidden hunger”. We all agree with the policy of having habitual residency qualifications for means-tested benefits.

Sanctions give me cause for concern. I have sat down with senior civil servants who have told me that there are no targets for sanctions, but I have also had confirmation from people working in the Department for Work and Pensions that they are under pressure for not having issued enough sanctions. I also see people who are being wrongly sanctioned. To me, that is very wrong. The safety net should be fair but, as I have said on a number of occasions, it is not operating properly at the moment.

The hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) made an excellent speech, and I support everything he said, but I would also like to emphasise the point made by the right hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) about the yellow card system. The sanctioning system was originally designed to be punitive, but under the universal credit system, it is supposed to be less so. The Government have gone wrong in not having moved towards a compliance-oriented sanctions system and waiting for universal credit to bring that in. We should have changed how the system was initially set up under the previous Government. It was initially set up as a punitive system, but it should have been moved towards compliance. I would support the yellow card system, which the Trussell Trust also supports.

Again, the Labour party has to think carefully about its policy proposals. It proposes to increase the number of years someone has to work to qualify for contributory jobseeker’s allowance from two to five years. The effect of that will be to reduce the number of people who get contributory JSA, which is why the Labour party is suggesting it, but the families involved will then face exactly the same sort of crisis that will drive them to a food bank.

Let us consider what happens to a couple who are both in low-paid work and then one of them loses their job. Under Labour’s new proposals they will find themselves having an income crisis that they would not find under the Government’s current legislation. This is a complex issue of detail, and some of the Opposition’s proposals would make more people go to food banks. We need to look at how to deal with it in detail and protect people from hunger—hidden or unhidden.