Food Banks (Wales)

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship this afternoon, Mrs Riordan. I am delighted and dismayed in equal measure to open this debate on food banks in Wales. I never thought, when I entered public life as a Cardiff councillor a long time ago, in 1991, that this topic would become a priority for discussion. I never thought I would see, in my time in public life, the rapid expansion of centres to hand out food to the people of Wales, on a scale unprecedented since the 1930s.

Of course, we from Wales have particularly strong and often bitter memories of the 1930s and of poverty. It was often said of my grandmother, Gwenllian Evans, a miner’s wife from Nantyglo, that she could spread an egg over Cardiff Arms park, such were her culinary skills of making a little go a long way. My mother, who is still alive today and living in Cwmbrân, often told me of the poverty that she grew up in, in the 1930s, in Nantyglo and the times when it was a struggle to feed the family.

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Kevin Brennan]

I will in a moment. I am just warming up; once I have got into my stride, I will let the hon. Gentleman have a go.

It is for those reasons that I believe the provision of social security is such a strong theme in the history of Welsh politics, and that the rapid increase in food banks in Wales is particularly hard for us in Wales to take.

[David T. C. Davies]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the history lesson as to what life was like under Ramsay MacDonald in the 1930s. Returning to the present, given the hon. Gentleman’s interest in food banks, why did no Labour Member of Parliament ask any questions about them during the entire period of the previous Labour Government?

[Kevin Brennan]

It is because food banks were such a minuscule feature on the scene compared with what we see today, despite the Prime Minister’s erroneous use of statistics recently at Prime Minister’s Question Time, in an attempt to sidestep his failure to take note of the rise of food banks over a long period.

It is particularly apt to talk about the 1930s because we are reliving that period of austerity economics. The failures of, and false theories behind, austerity economics are being repeated. We might expect that from the Conservatives, but it is staggering that it is being repeated in the coalition by the party of John Maynard Keynes through its approach to the economy.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

Will the hon. Gentleman concede that income inequality grew under previous Labour Governments, as it did under previous Conservative Governments?

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[Kevin Brennan]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the powerful world economic forces that have been at work in the past 20 years. It has almost been like King Canute all over again, trying to hold back the forces of international capitalism over the past 20 years and trying to keep income inequality down. The previous Labour Government did possibly more than any other Labour Government in attempting to alleviate that. For example, they introduced the national minimum wage, which made a massive contribution to trying to alleviate the impact of income inequality, which, in a globalised capitalist system, is difficult to resist.

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

Last year, in Wrexham, the first food bank was set up since I first came to Parliament in 2001. This April, the richest people in Britain will get a tax cut because of this coalition Government’s policies. That is the type of ethical approach taken by this Government.

[Kevin Brennan]

Indeed. I am sure that other hon. Members will want to point out that, while this crisis is going on, the Government saw it as their priority to lower the income tax of the richest.

[David T. C. Davies]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Kevin Brennan]

I will get a bit further into my stride before I let the hon. Gentleman have another go.

It is no coincidence that the three giants behind the creation of what became known as the welfare state came from Wales: David Lloyd George, Jim Griffiths and Aneurin Bevan. It is particularly ironic that the Government presiding over a policy that is helping to trigger the rapid expansion of food poverty and food charity for the poor are a Government who include members of the successor party to Lloyd George’s Liberals.

[Hywel Williams]

But is it?

[Kevin Brennan]

The hon. Gentleman calls into question whether the Lib Dems are the successor party. That is another debate for another day. Perhaps Lib Dem members of this Government should recall the words of David Lloyd George as we debate food banks and poverty. In presenting his “people’s Budget” 104 years ago, in 1909, he said:

“This…is a war Budget. It is for raising money to wage implacable warfare against poverty...I cannot help hoping and believing that before this generation has passed away, we shall have advanced a great step towards that good time, when poverty, and the wretchedness and human degradation which always follows in its camp, will be as remote to the people of this country as the wolves which once infested its forests.”—[Official Report, 29 April 1909; Vol. 4, c. 548.]

I am afraid that under this Government, the wolves of poverty are back, along with the sharks who prey on the financial misfortunes of the poor with their high-rate loans.

[Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend comment on a particular feature of the Neath food bank? Some 1,400 people in the Neath area are dependent on the food bank. Around half of those are in work. It is not solely people on benefits who are dependent on food banks; people in work are, too. The Wales Office website has still not taken down the Secretary of State’s commitment that people in work will always be better off than they would be on benefits. Those people are dependent on food banks in my constituency.

[Kevin Brennan]

Indeed. In a recent debate led by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger), my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) mentioned that he had collected food for FareShare in Penarth. Many of the people being helped by the food bank were not the people one might expect, but people in work who were struggling to get by. The hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) has been keen to intervene; I note that a new food bank has opened up in Chepstow. I am sure that he will pay it a visit shortly, if he has not already done so.

In Wales, the rapid expansion of food banks is a subject that resonates and rankles. It is symptomatic of an approach by the Government that represents a shift away from the British belief in the importance of social security, founded by the three great Welsh pioneers and symbolised by the old-age pension, national insurance and the national health service, and its replacement with the alien American concept of welfare stigmatism—the demonisation of the poor and the replacement of the state’s responsibility with the vagaries of the charitable handout. The good society has been gazumped by the ill-named “big society”, in which well-meaning individuals try to patch the gaping holes created by austerity economics.

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

Would it be too much to ask, on such a serious issue, that we steer away from the notion that all this started in May 2010? A food bank in west Wales, of which I am a patron, started in 2000 under the Labour Government. It is keen to stress that the argument that the hon. Gentleman is pushing is misleading.

[Kevin Brennan]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman was not accusing me of misleading the House, because you, Mrs Riordan, would have stamped on him if he had done so. My argument is not that food banks are bad things, or that their work is bad—it is not; it is good. What is wrong is the scale of the work that they have to do because of austerity economics and the rise in the cost of living, which are direct results of this Government’s policies. The Government made the ideological choice to follow an austerity economics policy—

[Simon Hart]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Kevin Brennan]

I am still speaking.

The Government are following an austerity economics policy, rather than making the economic choice, as they could have done, to deal with the deficit in a way that would not have led to such poor growth and its consequences.

[Hywel Williams]

The hon. Gentleman may know that nine of the 23 food banks in Wales opened in the past 12 months.

[Kevin Brennan]

The hon. Gentleman has hit the nail on the head. That is what is so unfortunate about the Prime Minister’s attempt to use statistical shenanigans to disguise the fact that the real issue is the sheer number of people who now have to go to food banks. I compare that with the charitable aid that was on offer under the previous Government, and that will always be present in our society, one way or another, which is to be welcomed. It is the scale of what is being done, not what is being done, that is most important.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

In Swansea, tonnes and tonnes of food are being gathered every month for the food bank, and thousands of people are affected. My hon. Friend will be aware that some 30,000 people now rely on food banks in Wales. What is his projection for after April, when 40,000 people will be affected by the second-bedroom tax? Does he agree that the least well-off will be worse off and relying on food banks?

[Kevin Brennan]

I will not make a projection, but I am sure the Minister will want to do so, because, of course, he should be very concerned about the impact of the Government’s changes. No doubt he has done a considerable amount of work on the issue raised by my hon. Friend, and he will perhaps say something about it when he winds up the debate.

[Simon Hart]

This is my second and last intervention. Will the hon. Gentleman express a view on a comment made by the 17-year-old food bank in west Wales?

“Statistics are misleading because it takes time to build up referrals and to be known about. The huge increase in recent years should not be taken as being the same thing as a huge increase in need.”

Those are not my comments; they are the comments of a food bank. Will the hon. Gentleman include them in the context of his argument?

[Kevin Brennan]

Obviously other people assess the need, and not the food bank itself—the vouchers are brought along to the food bank. I cannot comment on the hon. Gentleman’s local food bank, of which I am sure he has a better knowledge than I do; I can comment on my local food bank, however. I have heard stories from other hon. Members, and I have seen evidence from across the country. He is burying his head in the sand if he does not think that the vast expansion of food banks is happening because of the impact of austerity economics, welfare benefit changes and the cost of living.

We called this debate to set the record straight on the growing use of food banks in Wales and to highlight the cost of living crisis facing hundreds of thousands of Welsh families.

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

I am here to listen to the debate because I have constituents who work in Wales, and there are people from Wales who come to work in my constituency. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr Hain) highlighted, the issue is as much about people in work as about people out of work. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) share my concern about the explosion of the issue? We have heard about the growth in the number of food banks in Wales, but nationally, a couple of hundred food banks have opened across the UK. By the end of April, 250,000 people in our country will have accessed emergency food aid. Does he not think that is a terrible indictment in 2013 in the seventh most industrialised nation in the world?

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[Kevin Brennan]

I do, and I apologise in advance if I repeat some of those statistics later. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s work in Liverpool, which is sometimes wrongly referred to as the capital of north Wales, although it certainly has a strong Welsh influence. I recommend to Government Members the YouTube video that she made showing the impact of food banks and of the Government’s policies on the people in her constituency. The video is worth viewing.

The number of people relying on food banks in Wales has trebled over the past year, rising from just over 10,000 to just under 30,000. The issue is the sheer scale of numbers, not the percentage increase. The number, as hon. Members have said, is forecast to rise to 40,000 a year over the next 12 months. The growth of food bank usage in Wales is twice the UK average, which the Minister should think about.

The Government, however, will not acknowledge that the growth in food bank usage is a problem. A Downing street source recently said that food banks are for people who

“feel they need a bit of extra food”.

Let us pause for a moment to consider the casual callousness of that comment, because, like many MPs, I find myself reluctantly handing out food vouchers to my constituents from my constituency office and surgeries, and I never thought I would when I entered public life. I assure Downing street and the Prime Minister that not one of those vouchers has been issued to, nor have I ever been approached by, constituents who

“feel they need a bit of extra food”.

Constituents approach me because they are desperate and do not know how they are going to feed their children this weekend. In short, they are in a crisis and the state is not there to provide immediate assistance.

[Mrs Siân C. James (Swansea East) (Lab)]

Like me, I am sure my hon. Friend finds that, when he hands out food vouchers, not everyone who comes to him is a malingerer or a scrounger. There are people who have delayed benefit payments and are being denied the money they need to help keep their family in food and heating.

[Kevin Brennan]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that, in many cases, the reason why people are unable to feed their family that weekend is that there is no benefit. They have fallen upon a crisis in their life and there is no immediate assistance available. They have been told they will have to wait for some considerable time, and they are unable to access a crisis loan of any kind, which is why they come to us. We are handing out vouchers so they can get some food for the weekend. That is the reality. It is not a lifestyle choice, though the tone of the comments from No. 10 Downing street suggests it is. They do not want a free box of tinned or dried food to top up their adequately stocked pantries; they are using food banks because of the cost of living crisis that is facing families across the UK.

[Luciana Berger]

My hon. Friend is generous in giving way, and I will not seek to intervene on him any further. We know from questions asked just before Christmas that neither the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Chancellor nor Ministers from the Department for Work and Pensions or the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have visited a food bank. Does my hon. Friend agree that had any of those Ministers, including the Prime Minister, been to a food bank, we would not have heard those comments from No. 10?

[Kevin Brennan]

Yes, I suspect my hon. Friend is right. I am sure the Minister has visited a food bank and will say what impression it made on him. What were his feelings on visiting the food bank?

Government policies such as the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill, the VAT hike and the bedroom tax are making the crisis worse. I hope the Minister will distance himself from the comments we have heard from Downing street and acknowledge that Government policies are making things worse, not better, for hundreds of thousands of families across Wales.

[Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)]

There is no VAT on food, so the VAT change did not affect the price of food, which is important to remember.

[Kevin Brennan]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and I am aware of that fact, but he will find that families spend their money on things that do attract VAT, which has a direct impact on their disposable income and, therefore, on their ability to buy food.

[Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Visitors to food banks in my constituency tell me that, because they are paying VAT on other things, particularly on peripheral items such as fuel, they have less money to spend on food. That is the reason why they come into food banks for the first time. Those people are in work and often work long hours.

[Kevin Brennan]

Yes, indeed. That is a continuing process. The consumer prices index figures were released today. CPI is 2.7%, which is 1.2 percentage points above rises in income for people in work. There is an impact on everyone, including people in work. As we know, as VAT is a regressive tax, it has the greatest impact on those on the lowest incomes. Also, because their marginal propensity to consume is much higher than that of people on higher incomes, VAT is a particularly hard tax on them.

Some 90% of the food in food banks is donated, mainly by the public via supermarkets, Churches, community centres, schools and other organisations. I pay tribute to the efforts of food banks, many of which are run by the Trussell Trust, including the one in Ely in my constituency, which I have visited. They are intended as a crisis intervention for families in need. As I said in response to an intervention, the problem is not what food banks do but the scale on which they must now do it.

Food goes to distribution centres, where food bank volunteers gather, weigh, account for and issue the food. Food is issued only to recipients with vouchers, and vouchers are issued by front-line service officers trained in the assessment of need. Issuing organisations include, among others, citizens advice bureaux, Jobcentre Plus, GP surgeries, social services, housing officers and now, as I said earlier, Members of Parliament and, I suspect, Welsh Assembly Members, too.

A voucher gives just over three days’ worth of food, and vouchers are typically issued in batches of three. As we heard, the trust operates 23 food banks across Wales, nine of which opened in the last year, and four more are expected to open in Wales by Easter this year. There are now more than 270 food banks across the UK. In 2011, some 7,173 adults and 4,038 children in Wales used a food bank, and in 2012, the numbers rose to 18,721 adults and 10,328 children. The trust forecasts that the number of people relying on food banks in Wales will rise to 40,000 next year.

The trust collates information about the people using food banks. The consistent main reason cited for using a food bank, accounting for between 40% and 45% of usage, is benefit changes and delays in benefit payments. About one quarter of usage is accounted for by low-income families, and about one tenth by debt. As we have heard, food bank usage has exploded over the past two to three years. It is sad but typical that the Prime Minister recently tried to suggest that food banks expanded by a greater amount under the last Government than under this one; that abuse of statistics was skewered by Channel 4’s feature, “FactCheck”, which I recommend to hon. Members.

The trust forecasts that this year, 250,000 people across the UK will use a food bank. Hundreds of thousands of Welsh families face a cost of living crisis worsened by the Government’s policies, including welfare changes that are likely to make the crisis even worse. The Welfare Up-rating Bill alone will hit 400,000 low and middle-income households in Wales, including 170,000 families in Wales who currently receive working tax credits. It is estimated that 140,000 people in Wales will be worse off under the Government’s change to universal credit and 40,000 will be hit by the bedroom tax; I know that hon. Members are already getting a lot of traffic in their surgeries about that issue.

The Office for Budget Responsibility has shown that between 2010 and 2013, inflation will have risen by 16%, whereas average earnings will have risen by just half that, or 8%. The TUC estimates that four-year wage stagnation will cost the average worker £6,000. Wales has some of the highest energy bills in the UK, and more families are having to choose between heating and eating. As I said, the VAT hike alone added £450 a year to average household bills. Low economic growth has created fewer opportunities, and unemployment is forecast to rise in the next two years. Public sector job losses are forecast to reach 1 million by 2017. Meanwhile, in April, the Government will give more than 8,000 millionaires an average tax cut of £107,000, and the top 4,000 earners in Wales will benefit from a cut in the additional rate of income tax.

I have a few questions that I hope the Minister will answer in his response. What does he think best explains the explosion in food bank use in Wales? Is it the cost of living crisis facing Welsh families, or the notion that more people have suddenly decided that they want a bit of extra food, to quote No. 10? On the “Politics Show” this weekend, the Welsh Office Minister in the House of Lords, Baroness Randerson, said that the Government are reducing the deficit in the fairest possible way. What exactly is fair about the bedroom tax, which will hit 40,000 people in Wales while taxes are cut for millionaires? What impact does the Minister think the Welfare Up-rating Bill will have on the number of people in Wales relying on food banks? Has he made any estimate of that?

Does the Minister agree that the growing number of food banks in Wales is a symptom of the cost of living crisis facing Welsh families? Does he accept that the Government’s failure to get the economy moving is likely to have led more people to rely on food banks? What does he think the expansion of food bank usage in Wales and across the UK tells us about the success or otherwise of the Government’s policies? Does he think that the number of people in Wales who rely on food banks is likely to rise or fall over the next two years? I hope that he has made some estimate in preparation for this debate.

We never thought to see the return of the charity handout as a mass means of feeding the poor in Wales. Is the Minister proud of his Government’s big society, or ashamed of its small-minded demonisation of the poor?

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[Mrs Siân C. James (Swansea East) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) for securing the debate.

In Swansea East, we have a food bank that started off covering one area of Swansea, but then had to stretch its services right across the city because of the increase in people who needed its help. I have worked closely with the food bank from day one, and I have come to know the volunteers and have seen the dedication and effort they put into their work. They are very clear about why they have to do that work: they have to fill a gap the Government have created. There are pressures on our communities and on family incomes. It is not just the unemployed we are talking about; hard-pressed, hard-working families also need help.

I give out vouchers every day, and it is frightening how many more I now have to allocate. In the beginning, my staff and I kept a stock of perhaps five bags of dried goods on hand in our storeroom, and we would hand them out if a hardship case came in. In the run-up to Christmas, however, we were going to our local food bank at Gorseinon every day, and we were bringing back bagfuls of food for people who really needed help.

When I intervened on my hon. Friend, I talked about why people come to us for help. They do not come because they fancy a change in their menu or some of the nice extras that might be in the bag, but because they have nothing left in the cupboard. That is not because they are poor copers or have not managed their income properly, but because something has happened that means they need immediate help. That is where the food bank comes in.

We have heard a lot of facts, figures and statistics about food banks in Wales and across the UK. Every week, when my staff and I sit down and talk about what happened in the preceding week, we think, “Thank goodness we can turn to the food bank.” We are not being romantic about it; going to the food bank is just a fact for many people.

[Kevin Brennan]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Did she see the Salvation Army briefing for the debate? It said the development of the food bank movement

“may lead to a level of dependency which small community projects are simply unable to meet. This concern comes from the experience of churches in North America who find that food banks have become part of the welfare system.”

Is the point not that we are danger of going down the American route of using charity, rather than social security, which is the British way?

[Mrs James]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I agree entirely. It is a worry that there is this alternative to the benefits system. We understand all the stresses and strains in the economy, and we know that there are huge pressures and increasing demands on income, but we just cannot let people fall behind. A measure of any good society or state is how it looks after its weakest, poorest and most vulnerable. I am ashamed to say that we are not doing a good job with some of the hard-pressed people I meet.

In Swansea, the demand on food banks has increased, and not just over Christmas. In September and October, they distributed two tonnes of food, which I am sure equates to many dozens of bags. It is hard even to grasp the idea of weighing out two tonnes of food on to pallets. Thank goodness the Churches and schools were having their harvest festivals; it meant we met the demand. However, we were really concerned about Christmas. I was so concerned, and the issues raised with me were so concerning, that I went to local employers and shopkeepers and asked, “Will you donate food?” The response was magnificent, and we got the additional food. Through a concerted effort with other organisations in Swansea, we managed to help people over the Christmas period.

It is no fun if someone has not had their benefit payment, and if paying bills has taken the food out of their mouths. That is the reality: people are robbing Peter to pay Paul. Will they heat the house? Will they put food in their children’s mouths? I am worried—I hope the Minister will respond to this point—about the one in 10 people in Wales who tell us they have skipped a meal to feed other members of their family. They are not making that up, and that is a serious issue.

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[Kevin Brennan]

On a point of order, Mrs Riordan. Is it in order for the Minister to cast aspersions on the motives of Members of this House without being willing to name them in the Chamber during the course of the debate?

[Mrs Linda Riordan (in the Chair)]

It is not for the Minister to name names.