Food Banks

John Glen Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

It is a privilege to contribute to this debate, and a privilege and honour to represent the headquarters of the Trussell Trust in Salisbury. The trust’s food banks were established in my constituency more than 15 years ago. This started in 2000, when the trust was working in Bulgaria, looking after 60 street children who were sleeping at railway stations there. The founder of the charity received a call from a desperate mother in Salisbury who said, “My children are going to be hungry tonight. What are you going to do about it?” That happened in 2000, and in 2004 two food banks were set up. The people of Salisbury support the trust’s food bank very generously all the year round. Yes, there are people in Salisbury, which has 1.6% unemployment, who use food banks. I want to pay tribute to the individuals I have got to know over the past three and half years from Salisbury who lead the work of the Trussell Trust.

[Robert Halfon]

My hon. Friend speaks powerfully. The spirit that he mentions in relation to the food bank set up by the Trussell Trust has extended to Harlow with its food bank, which was originally set up by the Michael Roberts Charitable Trust but is linked to the Trussell Trust. An extraordinary amount of work is done there, and it has become a very important part of our community. Will my hon. Friend celebrate that? Does he agree that we should support that and not try to use it as a political football?

[John Glen]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. Of course, we all support the work of the food banks and the individuals who work in them. I wish to finish my tribute to Chris Mould, David McAuley, Molly Hudson and Mark Elling. I have got to know them, and their responsibility has been to roll out the growth of food banks. That may be uncomfortable for some Government Members, as might its implications and the way the tone of the debate has taken an unfortunate turn this afternoon. We have to acknowledge the growth in food banks. In 2005-06, there were fewer than 3,000 users, but that had risen to 40,000 by 2009-10. I accept that we have seen a similar scale of use. The question is: why, and what are we going to do about it? [Interruption] We are talking about a factor of 10, to about half a million users at the moment. I am not trying to deny the scale of food bank use. If Labour Members would stop trying to make political points, that would be helpful.

The important issue is getting to the bottom of why so many people are using food banks. The Trussell Trust says that this is about not only homelessness, benefit delay, low income and changes to benefits, but domestic violence, sickness, refused short-term benefit advances, debt and unemployment.

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

A constituent of mine has had to go to our Trussell Trust because she was a victim of domestic violence. She was separated, had nowhere to go and her husband was not prepared to fund anything. I pay tribute, as my hon. Friend has been doing, to the trust. Hope for Belper and the Belper News, our local paper, have been supporting it to increase the amount of food given by volunteers to the Trussell Trust in Belper and thus spread the amount of food it can give out to people requiring it.

[John Glen]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention, which speaks for itself. On the deeper causes, it is not a question of isolating one particular change. I recognise that the Trussell Trust has acknowledged from the data it has collected that the benefit changes have presented significant challenges. But what I find lacking in this debate is a serious estimation of what alternative measures could be put in place; all I have heard is, “Remove the sanctions regime. Give more money.” Where is that money going to come from? How will the incentive effect—

[Jim Shannon]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[John Glen]

I will carry on. How will the incentive effect of the benefit changes that the Government so desperately want to bring in have a chance of success if we do not make those changes? Some of the benefit changes have taken a long time to come through, and we need to let them take effect so that we can deliver the deeper change that needs to occur. People are motivated to go to the Trussell Trust and other food banks across the country for a whole number of reasons. They may find themselves in chaotic situations; they could be in debt and have no financial management skills to know how to prioritise their spending. I am not saying that that is true in every case, but we must be honest about the breadth of the problems faced by the individuals who use the food banks. We must come up with a solution that addresses all the issues. We should not tritely simplify the matter and say, “It is all about the benefit changes and the Government must do something, but by the way I will not specify what we would do as an alternative, how much it would cost and how we would pay for it and in what time scale.” Unless alternative policies are advanced, the things that some Members are saying ring very shallow for everyone involved in food banks.

It is regrettable that the relationship between the Trussell Trust and the DWP has broken down. I hope that a dialogue can reopen and we can see some progress. I do not believe that any Member in this House is happy to see people in their constituency going hungry, but we should be honest and holistic in our view of what needs to be done to sort it out.