Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived

Debate between Luciana Berger and Stephen Timms

Tuesday 18th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister for setting out the Government’s position and look forward to hearing the European Scrutiny Committee’s views in due course.

First, we need to be absolutely clear that there is a large and growing need in the UK for the type of help that the fund would be designed to provide. The Minister mentioned FareShare a moment ago, and I notice that it gets a couple of mentions in the impact assessment of the fund, for example on page 100 of the bundle. As he rightly said, FareShare has never obtained any funding from the EU because the UK has not taken up the funding that is in place. It is slightly confusing that it is mentioned in the impact assessment, because that implies that it has been a beneficiary, but it has not. My understanding, however, is that €50 million is earmarked for the UK from the existing fund, none of which is currently handed over to the UK.

There is certainly a rapidly growing need for the service provided by FareShare and food banks such as those supported by the Trussell Trust, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) referred to a few minutes ago. The latest annual report from FareShare showed that it spent £1.6 million last year. As those who are responsible for FareShare say, a small fraction of the €50 million earmarked for the UK would enable it to transform what it is doing. FareShare provides food to 800 charities and, through them, to almost 40,000 people a day who would otherwise not have enough to eat. It is a wholesale operation supplying food to charities on the front line, and the food that it is distributes is sourced from food retailers and manufacturers, for whom the food is surplus to requirements.

A few minutes ago, the Minister said that everything was absolutely fine and that there really are not any problems in the UK: there are more people in work than ever before, and so on. However, the most recent annual FareShare report says:

“More people are suffering hardship and needing food support than ever before. Demand for our food is rocketing.”

The Minister, for reasons that I entirely understand, was unwilling to accept that the demand on food banks will go up in the next 12 months, but it will undoubtedly do so. Indeed, only yesterday, he sent me a written answer to a question that I tabled about the impact of the benefit cap in London. The information that he supplied was that, in London alone, 27,600 households will lose income when the benefit cap takes effect in April, and of those, 10,800 households will lose over £100 a week. There is no doubt at all in my mind or, I suspect, in the mind of any objective observer that the need for the kind of service that FareShare and food banks provide will only increase in the next few months.

The number of food banks supported by the Trussell Trust, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree said, is about to top the 300 mark. Three new food banks are set up every week, so the number has doubled over the past year. They are all Church-based, and involve Church members and non-members in their governance; there are 3,700 churches and 3,000 schools involved at the moment. As my hon. Friend pointed out, a quarter of a million people will receive food from a food bank in the course of this year. It is a remarkable and impressive initiative, but it is also a terrible indictment that so many people in Britain cannot afford basic food, and have to go to a food bank to obtain it.

[Luciana Berger]

We are the seventh most industrialised nation, and the number of people accessing emergency food aid has exploded. It was 26,000 under the Labour Government—I make that point, because it was 26,000 people too many—but I wish to reinforce the point that my right hon. Friend has just made. By the end of the year, a quarter of million people will have had to go to a food bank. If Members go to meet the people who go to a food bank they will see that they do not go in with smiling faces—they go in hanging their heads in shame. Does my right hon. Friend not agree that the Government should do everything in their power to make sure that no one needs to access emergency food aid in the UK?

[Stephen Timms]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend, who makes a powerful and telling point. As she will know, food banks work hard to minimise the loss of dignity involved in going to a food bank. For example, they often give out food in supermarket carrier bags so that it does not look as if people have been to a food bank. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: it is a terrible indictment of the state of our nation that a quarter of a million people have to do that this year, and the number, I confidently and regretfully predict, is bound to go up over the next few months.

Why has that terrible thing occurred? It is, of course, difficult to survive on benefits or on a low working income, and the Government’s plan to uprate benefits by less than inflation will undoubtedly make matters worse over the next few months—I have spoken already about the effects of the benefit cap that will take effect in April. The plight of those who lose more than £100 a week—as many will when the benefit cap comes in—will be desperate, and a surge of people will be driven to food banks, able to feed themselves and their families only as a result of the help they find there.

The Trussell Trust—this returns to the Minister’s direct responsibilities—makes the additional point that of the 250,000 recipients we have heard about this year, 100,000 are people for whom jobcentres have been too slow in making a payment or made a mistake. Food banks say that more people are turning up with no money because they have been sanctioned by Jobcentre Plus. Often, they have no idea why they have been sanctioned, and know only that they have got no money and must get food from the food bank.

[Luciana Berger]

My right hon. Friend will know that if someone goes to a food bank, they must tick a box giving the reason they have to access emergency food aid, and more than 40% say it is because of delays to their benefit payments. Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that in an article in The Guardian, Ministers said they aim to ensure that 80% of recipients get benefits within 16 days? Sixteen days is long enough to wait for people who have no cushion or money at all, but what about the 20% of people who have to wait for more than 16 days? Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Interventions should be brief and one at a time. The hon. Lady has made her point.

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. As well as delays there is the problem of mistakes and people being wrongly sanctioned. Friday before last I met a young man in my constituency who has been sanctioned and told that he will lose benefits for 14 months because he is attending a residential course delivered by the Prince’s Trust. An agreement between Jobcentre Plus and the Prince’s Trust means that people on Prince’s Trust activities are not sanctioned if they are unable to sign on while on a residential activity, but in that case—and, I fear, in others—the agreement is not being properly implemented by the jobcentre.

[Luciana Berger]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend and I hope not to intervene on him further. I have one more point for my final intervention. The Minister said that he welcomed the number of people who are in work, but we heard today that if people who access working tax credits call his Department’s phone line—I know this because my office called today—they are told that they have to wait three weeks for the form, and that when they get it back they must wait at least two weeks for it to be processed. Those are people in work who depend on additional funds to support them. Does he share my concern that although the Government are keen to see people in work, those are the very people who are being crucified?

[Stephen Timms]

That is an alarming report and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for passing it on. That matter will be on the Minister’s desk—[Interruption.] I beg his pardon; it will be on a desk in his former Department in the Treasury. There are worries—we have heard reports today—about delays in answering the phone at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, and I hope that my hon. Friend’s point will be addressed.