Food Banks

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Roger Williams]

I agree that getting into work is the best way out of poverty, but work is not always available for people. I am sure that hon. Members know of such experiences.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

But does the hon. Gentleman not agree that a lot of people who are claiming food parcels from food banks are actually in work?

[Roger Williams]

I am sure that is the case. I am trying to respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood). I believe that the current benefits system is not fit for purpose and that this Government are making progress to make it better, but there is still a huge amount of work to be done. The conditionality of so many benefits leads to difficulties. In my constituency, Jobcentre Plus seems to be using different criteria in different towns to impose sanctions on people. Obviously, when sanctions are imposed, people are left in great difficulty.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

Thirty-three food banks operate in Wales and there are two in my constituency: one in Caernarfon and one in Bangor. In 2011, 11,000 Welsh people were dependent on food banks for limited help. The figure is now 60,000.

People often go to food banks because their benefits have not been paid, as the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) said. There are mistakes, benefits are paid late and people are sanctioned, sometimes wrongly. A man came to see me on Monday who had been sanctioned and had no money. He had been called for an interview, but was not able to go because he had to take his seriously ill wife to hospital for cancer treatment. He could not be 30 miles away at the same time.

[Ian Lavery]

A gentleman in my constituency faced the same circumstances. He was sanctioned when he was in hospital for a heart condition. He lived for a further three days on field mushrooms and borrowed eggs. Is that what we want to see in the UK in 2013-14?

[Hywel Williams]

The hon. Gentleman makes an eloquent point about the harshness of the current system.

Significantly, about 20% of the people who go to food banks are the working poor. They are not the scroungers and shirkers who are cited so enthusiastically by some hon. Members and by the popular newspapers.

The growth of food banks in Wales is a symptom of a much more fundamental problem: growing inequality and the failure of wages and incomes to match the increasing costs of living, particularly food inflation. That is a particularly acute problem in Wales, where gross value added in some areas is about 60% of the UK average.