Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Eustice and Luciana Berger

Thursday 10th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

6. What recent assessment he has made of the provision of food aid in the UK.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)]

The provision of food aid ranges from small, local provision to regional and national schemes. There are no official figures for the number of food aid organisations or the number of people using them in the UK. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has commissioned research to assess publicly available evidence on food aid provision in the UK, and that work will be made available in due course.

[George Eustice]

There are a number of complicated reasons for those changes and nobody is quite sure. That is one of the reasons we commissioned this report. The use of food banks has been going up for some time, and it also increased dramatically under the previous Government. This is a good example of the big society in action, and we are seeing some good organisations stepping up to help people.

[Luciana Berger]

I welcome the Minister to his new post, but I hope he will have time to refer to the facts and figures of the matter. Under this Government, the use of food banks has rocketed, and I hope he will read carefully the report from Oxfam and Church Action on Poverty that came out in May and shows that, this year alone, half a million people will access emergency food aid. I think that is a national disgrace. Does the Minister agree?