Food Poverty

Lisa Nandy Excerpts

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Luciana Berger]

I thank my hon. Friend for commending the work of the Salvation Army. I mentioned Magic Breakfast. He is right to suggest that the food from a food bank is non-perishable and not fresh; it is tinned fruit, vegetables, meat and fish, as well as pasta, cereal and UHT milk, so it is nothing glamorous. I also commend the work of FoodCycle, which provides fresh meals for people across the country. Its network of three cafés is growing, and it does a great job using food that would otherwise go to waste.

I know that supermarkets have to play their part, but I would like to take a moment to commend their recent work on making food collections, which several of us will have been involved in. At the start of October, Sainsbury’s, in partnership with FareShare, did a national collection, collecting 2 million meals from its customers. As customers came into its stores, they were given a list of things to collect, and they donated them afterwards. Six hundred volunteers helped in that exercise. Only last week, the Co-operative group teamed up with the ITV breakfast show “Daybreak” and the Salvation Army for the “You CAN Help” food campaign. I went to my local Co-op store and saw the cans being collected, and I made a contribution myself. The final figure for the collection is not known exactly, but it is expected that more than 110,000 cans will be redistributed across the country.

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. I commend the work supermarkets are doing in partnership with charities—I had hoped to make this point later—but they must make sure they are not part of the very problem she talks about by paying people poverty wages or giving them zero-hours contracts and only part-time work. Obviously, it is commendable that supermarkets are doing something to try to deal with the problem once it is created, but they must make sure they are not part of the problem in the first place.

[Luciana Berger]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I agree. Some supermarkets are a lot better than others in terms of the contracts they give out. Not every supermarket has taken part in food collections. It is important to add that Sainsbury’s and Tesco both made sure that they did not make any profit from the collections that they made. Of course supermarkets have a massive role to play in many ways, including ensuring that their staff are not living on poverty wages.

I was at the Tesco collection in my constituency last week, at the store that collected more than any other in the country. People were incredibly generous. We collected 15,000 meals at the store in Allerton road. Tesco collected 2 million meals and gave a 30% top-up. The public have shown tremendous generosity, but we should not have to have such collections.

I want quickly to reflect on the future. I have spoken about people in work who are in poverty and mentioned the Joseph Rowntree Foundation figures of the other week. There are in this country more people in poverty who are in work than there are out of work. That is important, and the Government should reflect on it. We have had the autumn statement; we did not get an answer from the Prime Minister at Prime Minister’s Question Time, but we know from analysis done by the Institute for Fiscal Studies that 60% of the people who are most affected are those in working households and that the poorest 10% of the population will have the biggest percentage drop in their incomes because of the autumn statement. Many organisations have raised serious concerns about how that will affect what happens. Barnardo’s talks about families that currently exist on only £12 per person and are worried about the future.

Yesterday, as reported in column 152 of Hansard, I asked the Chancellor whether he was ashamed that by the end of this year, on his watch, 250,000 people would obtain emergency food aid. I was disappointed that he did not want to reflect at all on the substance of my question and the serious issue that people face. He referred only to having to deal with the economic challenges. I urge the Minister to think long and hard, particularly now that we are in the run-up to Christmas, about what the Government can do to help not only the people in our society who are most in need but the people we least expect to find suddenly in desperate and difficult circumstances.

I do not know whether the Minister has visited a food bank. Perhaps he will tell us whether he has been able to see one at first hand and speak to people who must obtain emergency food aid. My hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) made a good point about the role that supermarkets should play in redistribution and in preventing the waste of food. That important issue needs to be dealt with. However, I would like to know what the Minister is doing and what conversations he has with his colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions, particularly about delay in benefit payments, which is the largest contributory factor in the need to get emergency food aid. What conversations has he had or what representations has he made to his colleagues in the Treasury, in the light of the autumn statement, about the fact that the poorest in society will be hit hardest? My concern is that the situation will only get worse if the Government do not do something serious about it soon.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

I will be as quick as I can, Sir Alan. I want to add a few points to the comprehensive introduction given by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger).

Food poverty is becoming an urgent safeguarding issue for children in this country. Not only are malnutrition-related illnesses—anaemia, scurvy, diabetes and rickets—on the rise, but teacher surveys increasingly show that children come to school hungry and dirty. About half of teachers now admit to bringing in food for them from their own home, and about a quarter of teachers now say that they have given them money from their wages to buy food.

My police force—Greater Manchester police—has said that children shoplift simply to get food. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) mentioned a similar situation in Bristol, and the Metropolitan police have said the same. Recently, Save the Children launched its first ever UK-wide appeal for feeding and clothing children in the United Kingdom. In 2012, surely we can do better than that. I agree with Save the Children that that quite simply should not happen here. There is also the appalling spectacle of Jobcentre Plus referring people directly to food banks. I share the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree that food banks are now seen as part of the welfare state.

How on earth have we got here? I can tell the Minister that we have got here for all the reasons given by my hon. Friend—a combination of rising food prices, which have risen at three times the G7 average, and benefit delays, high unemployment, part-time work and poverty. At the same time, the Government are stripping away support for children and families. We have seen cuts to the early intervention grant of about 40%, coupled with cuts to children’s services. We have seen changes to free school meals that will take 350,000 children out of that entitlement, although one in four children rely on free school meals for their only hot meal of the day. The Institute for Fiscal Studies now predicts that, by 2020, child poverty will stand at 2.4 million. In this country, that is a damning indictment of what this Government are doing to communities and children.

We are seeing not only a response from charities, but from Labour councils. Where the Government will not step in, they are doing so. In Islington and Newham, the councils have introduced universal free school meals, and in Hull, the council has reduced the cost of school meals to just £1. I want the Minister to take away this point: if the Government do not care about child poverty, fine—they do not care—but food poverty threatens completely to derail their own outcomes, such as education improvement and the other stated outcomes of the Secretary of State for Education. There is no chance that children who arrive at school so hungry that they cannot think straight can achieve the sort of outcomes that he talks about.

Similarly, the autumn statement has recently been delivered by a Chancellor who seeks to make a distinction between strivers and scroungers. Oxfam says that 60% of the families using its food banks across Greater Manchester are in work. About half the children now growing up in poverty have parents who work, in many cases with both parents working. That makes an absolute nonsense of the distinction between strivers and scroungers. If the Government will not feel shame from the moral case that is made about child poverty in this country, will they at least understand that it threatens their own outcomes and that action must be taken?