Food Banks

Lord Beith Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

The quality and quantity of welfare produced by the state has not been good enough for a very long time. It is astonishing and shaming that the welfare state can tax and spend so much, and yet leave people hungry. Some 12,000 children in Buckinghamshire live in income poverty, and one in five children in Wycombe go to bed hungry—that increases to one in three in some parts of my constituency. It is a scandalous indictment of the safety net that is the welfare state that this happens. But I am proud of the One Can Trust, run by Sarah Mordaunt, Kate Vale and more than 100 volunteers in Wycombe, which steps in with emergency food when the state fails.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

A mistaken impression has been created in this debate that all that food banks do is distribute emergency food. What they actually do is give financial advice and debt advice to people who have got into difficult situations—emergency food is only part of what they do.

[Steve Baker]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that, and indeed the One Can Trust also provides recipes which help people to get through and use that food effectively. The One Can Trust has delivered 2,859 parcels since March 2012, reaching 3,182 adults and more than 2,000 children—without the trust, poverty in Wycombe would be truly desperate. It operates five pick-up centres, has eight sessions at which people can pick up food and usually delivers within 24 hours. The trust enjoys support from the Big Yellow Self Storage Company, and has matched funding from Barclays and Santander. Warm drinks are provided to volunteers by Starbucks, and the Eden shopping centre provides parking for volunteers. This is an astonishing exercise of social power, and I am very proud of what the trust is doing, particularly because of the story of one young boy.

This is a young boy who about 33 years ago, at the age of eight or nine, bounced down the stairs because his loving father called him down for his tea. This boy bounced joyfully down the stairs but thought it was funny, in his youthfulness and his childishness, to poke the fried egg and say, “Ugh, what’s that?” At that point, his father, with his great working man’s hands, picked up that plate of food and slung it straight in the swing bin, bellowing, “All right, we will both go hungry.” That was my father, a working man who had reached the end of the money and the end of the food. I did not mean to wound my father then, nor do I mean to wound him now, because he loved me and he loves me still. My father did absolutely everything he could, but where was the welfare state? It was not there for him, because it did not know what to do for an independent, self-employed man who had run out of work.

Unfortunately, that went on and on, to and fro, in the legacy of the previous Government; it was tough for a self-employed builder. My father coped by finding further work. My mother took on two and even three tough jobs. I saw her get arthritis in her hands, ageing her early, all because there was no food. What happened eventually is, of course, that they divorced, and my mother went on to live with a man who could at least put food on the table. So I certainly know the consequences—I live with them today—of having too little food in a home.

I am therefore proud of the One Can Trust, because in times of crisis it feeds families. I like to believe that had food been available in my home when I was a child, not only would my father not have had to go hungry, but perhaps my mother would not have had to take on those jobs, perhaps they would not have divorced and perhaps a range of things that ought not to have happened but which did would never have taken place. I am very proud indeed that at this time people across our nation are stepping up where the state is falling that little short. However, I must ask: what is the cause of the crisis? The cause of this crisis—