Oral Answers to Questions

Huw Irranca-Davies Excerpts

Thursday 29th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I visited the food bank in Camborne in my constituency just before Christmas to support the work that it does. It is better for food banks to have predominantly non-perishable goods to support the great work that they do.

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

There is no shortage of food in this country, yet more than 1 million people are going hungry and relying on emergency food aid. There is no shortage of compassion from food bank volunteers, but there is a hunger of compassion in a Government who are taking us back to the 1930s in spending and to Victorian times in attitudes to the poor. The Secretary of State sat out the last debate on food banks. Will the Minister apologise for the Government’s staggering complacency in the face of a food crisis in which an advanced nation cannot feed its working poor and its vulnerable, or will he join again the collective chorus of denial in the dying days of this Government?

[George Eustice]

The Government have got 1.7 million people back into work and taken 3 million of the lowest-paid out of tax altogether. If the Labour party had had its way, it would have frozen energy prices at the top of the market, but we have seen energy prices continue to fall. Food prices have fallen for the first time since 2002 and are continuing to do so.