Food Banks

Duncan Hames Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Alun Cairns]

rose—

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

rose—

[Maria Eagle]

I have made it clear why I am not giving way.

For those with children, the rising cost of child care is making it harder and harder to take on work. The cost of nursery places is rising five times faster than pay, while there are 35,000 fewer child care places and 576 fewer Sure Start centres. Most perniciously of all, the Government’s bedroom tax has increased the pressure on 660,000 people, including more than 400,000 disabled people, yet the vast majority do not have a smaller place to move to. The average family affected is now losing £720 a year.

This debate is a vital opportunity for the House to acknowledge the rising reliance on food aid in our country. We ensured that it took place, because the Government were never likely to do so. They will not even publish their own—clearly damning—research into why the rise in food bank usage is so high. Since April, just one charity’s network of food banks has helped half a million people, a third of whom were children. The reasons for that are clear: the rising cost of living, caused by rising prices that have outstripped falling and stagnant wages; the Government’s unwillingness to stand up to vested interests in the energy and water companies; their unwillingness to take action on the lack of available hours for part-time workers, the rise of zero-hours contracts and poverty pay; incompetent welfare reforms and delays in making payments; and the bedroom tax.

Britain can do better than this. We need a long-term plan to tackle the cost of living crisis and reduce dependency on food banks, including a freeze on energy prices while we reset the market, a water affordability scheme and tough new powers for Ofwat to cut bills, measures to end the abuses of zero-hours contracts, Make Work Pay contracts that reduce company’s tax bills to incentivise them to pay a living wage, an expansion of free child care for three and four-year-olds from 15 hours to 25 hours a week to help working parents, and the abolition of the bedroom tax. That is how we, a one-nation Labour Government, will address the scandal of food poverty in our country. That is how we will once again reduce and then remove the need for food aid and the reliance on food banks in our country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Roger Williams]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. [Interruption.] I am being encouraged to say that the Government intend to meet the Trussell Trust. I am pleased about that.

Food banks have come rather late to my constituency, but I really welcome them. I went to the New Life church in Llandrindod Wells and was very impressed by the number of volunteers who were working there. They were members of the church and other volunteers who had gone there particularly to distribute food. I then went on to Tesco. I do not often compliment Tesco on its work, but on this matter it was doing very good work indeed. The church had a stall near the store’s exit and people were encouraged to donate some of the food they had bought. I was overwhelmed by the generosity of people—some of whom were on low incomes themselves—who were prepared to give a little away in order to help others. Tesco also made a 30% contribution.

[Duncan Hames]

I share my hon. Friend’s sentiments in relation to the food banks I have visited. Does he agree that, even though food banks came to his constituency more recently, during each of his 16 years in this place, in good times and bad, there will have been constituents who would have benefited greatly from the availability of the services of food banks if they had been there at the time?

[Roger Williams]

I have not quite achieved 16 years, but that is my intention if I am successful at the next election.

My hon. Friend is right. I am sure that every hon. Member will agree that it is not just lately that people have come to our surgeries because they have had problems with their benefits and find themselves in desperate and dire circumstances. Before the food bank was established in my constituency, I had no organised place to refer people to; I had to find churches or philanthropists to help them to get out of trouble and to get them through it. At least now I can direct them to somewhere they will get help.