Food Poverty

Huw Irranca-Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I am pleased to respond to this debate from the Labour Front Bench. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) for what was, I agree, a real tour de force. Her speech set out in comprehensive detail and with passion what is happening not only nationally but in her own constituency. I commend her not only for opening this debate but for her work on the issue. I also commend the speeches of my hon. Friends the Members for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds), for Islwyn (Chris Evans) and for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) and all other colleagues who have spoken so passionately on so many interventions. That shows the strength of feeling about this debate and the reality of what is happening on the ground. I also thank the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) for his contribution, some aspects of which I will address. I note that he was equally shocked at the recent explosion in the number of food banks.

In previous debates on food poverty and food affordability, I have discussed in great detail strategic aspects of food policy, including global commodity speculation, domestic food security and resilience, so I do not intend to repeat those arguments. Instead, I will ask the Minister a very simple and direct question that has already been put by many others today: why, at Christmas 2012 in an advanced and developed nation, are we facing a rising tide of food poverty, with working families and individuals, as well as the unemployed, turning up in greater numbers every day at food banks and relying more and more on the immense and invaluable generosity of others?

The contribution of time and effort by volunteers at food banks, kitchens and food collection and distribution points throughout the country is quite simply incredible and inspiring. People—who are often themselves of limited means—have risen to the challenge of sharing food with those who, temporarily or otherwise, are unable to feed themselves and their families. We should be proud of that generosity of spirit, and proud of that statement of shared humanity. It is not pity; it is far more than simple charity. It is a recognition that—in a way that the Government have failed to understand—we actually are all in this together.

That is why Labour is supporting the work of groups such as FareShare, the Trussell Trust, FoodCycle and so many more that have been mentioned today that are responding to a real, immediate and growing crisis in the country. We should be proud of that endeavour and proud of the amazing collective response; yet we should also be ashamed as an advanced first-world nation that the state—the Government—is quietly walking away from its responsibilities to its citizens.

As we approach Christmas, I say to the Government—to good Ministers in this Government—that they are playing their part at the moment in the good Samaritan parable, but it is not the role that we want them to play. As others are stepping in to help the victims of food poverty and wider poverty who are in need, the Government are walking by on the other side of the road.

The Government have now presided over a decline into “Breadline Britain”, which is the title of one of the most comprehensive studies of the parlous finances of working households—not the unemployed, but the employed. The study estimated that nearly 7 million working-age adults are living in extreme financial stress, despite being in employment, and each of those households was just one step from penury—from extreme poverty. There are 2.2 million children in those households, although Save the Children estimates that as many as 3.5 million children may now be experiencing food poverty.

That is why increasingly the human face of food banks is not only the person relying on welfare support, although they are there: the pensioner who is otherwise faced with a choice between heating and eating and who can postpone making that choice at a food bank and the recently jobless mother finding that she cannot make the budget stretch for the whole week, sometimes choosing between feeding herself and her child. They—and many more—are there and are receiving support. But so are the working poor—people who find that the rising costs of living and declining real incomes mean that the ends no longer meet. As economic indicators go, the rise in payday lenders on otherwise struggling high streets is a sad indictment of socio-economic failure.

I make a “Christmas future” prediction for the Minister. More people will rely on the support of food banks this Christmas than last Christmas, and next Christmas more people will be in that situation than this Christmas, when the changes to welfare—including those announced in the autumn statement—fully kick in, affecting not only those reliant on benefits, who we have heard about, but the majority who are actually in work.

If the Minister does not want to listen to me, I ask him to listen instead to the Government’s one-time poverty tsar and a former welfare Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), who said:

“Recent welfare cuts and policy changes make it difficult to advise these people where they should turn to get out of it: it really is genuinely shocking.”

As the Member of Parliament for Ogmore, I personally endorse his concerns. The days of an MP signposting constituents to sources of support in troubled times are diminishing, as those social security and local emergency support structures weaken and crumble under this Government.

I do not believe that any Minister or coalition Member of Parliament came into the House to do the wrong thing by the people they represent, but they cannot continue to argue that they are helpless against global economic storms. The decline into “Breadline Britain” is happening on their watch, day by day, month by month, and now year after year. They can choose to do better, and that is why this debate cannot be, and has not been, simply about the amazing work carried out by those groups and organisations that have chosen not to walk by but to help their neighbours, in the best traditions of Christians, Muslims, all faith groups and no-faith groups—in the best traditions of humanity.

We applaud and continue to support the work of those groups and organisations—we could not do without them—but we ask the Government also to recognise that their own actions on benefits and tax reforms and their social and economic policies are not only failing to alleviate the problems but are worsening the situation. Think again, before it is too late.