Food Poverty: Merseyside

Marie Rimmer Excerpts

Tuesday 16th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Sir David. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) on securing the debate.

Food poverty is at epidemic levels across Great Britain. As my hon. Friend said, it was defined by the Department of Health as

“the inability to afford, or to have access to, food to make up a healthy diet”.

We question “a healthy diet”. Under the current Government, we have seen a 122% increase in the number of people admitted to hospital with malnutrition. For the most part, that is because a good diet is simply out of reach financially. In 2016-17, there were 806 admissions to hospital of people suffering from primary malnutrition in England. Food price increases, welfare reforms, wider Government cuts and insecure, low-paid employment are at the root of this crisis. An increasing number of our citizens are living in genuine deprivation.

I have seen the problem of malnutrition in my own constituency, where 74 people were admitted to my local NHS trust—St Helens and Knowsley—with diagnoses of primary or secondary malnutrition in 2015-16. Unfortunately, the data is not divided into primary and secondary at local level, and we know that secondary malnutrition can be related to other illnesses.

Why is this happening in the sixth wealthiest country in the world? Put simply, we have become so profoundly unequal that last year’s Sunday Times rich list stated that it was “Boom time for billionaires” in Britain. Well, the Government have certainly addressed that situation. The £20 billion-worth of tax cuts under this Government have largely benefited the wealthy, and there have been increases in indirect taxation, which disproportionately affects the less affluent in our society—the very people we are talking about—and more than cancels out the effects of any direct tax cuts from which they might have benefited. Research published last year indicates that we are now the most unequal society in Europe, both socially and economically.

Let me tell hon. Members about the experience of many of my constituents. They are often plagued by low-income, insecure employment and never have any opportunity to save for a rainy day. They are often people who are unemployed through no fault of their own, who are in between jobs or, in some cases, longer-term unemployed, and, of course, those who are affected by benefit delays and changes. People affected by benefit delays and changes make up 43% of food bank referrals nationally and 42% of referrals in my constituency.

Other crises bring people to food banks: being without benefits altogether, which can happen for a variety of reasons, including waiting for claims to be processed, debt, delayed wages, domestic violence, not having recourse to public funds, and homelessness and sickness. All the people affected have been let down by a Government who are bent on cutting the social safety net from under them even though they can make £20 billion of tax cuts.

Food aid organisations are doing a sterling job of plugging an ever widening gap, and I pay tribute to the volunteers at food banks up and down the country. I have witnessed in my constituency how hard the volunteers work in St Helens and Knowsley to ensure that families have access to the supplies that they need. In the six months from April to September 2017, the Trussell Trust recorded that, in Merseyside, three-day emergency food supplies were handed out to 16,761 adults and, appallingly, 10,145 children. That is without the likely spike in use in the months leading up to Christmas and over Christmas.

The St Helens and Knowsley food banks have provided me with ward-level data relating to food bank use in my constituency. It is shocking. In 2017, 2,134 of my constituents were recipients of supplies from the food bank in St Helens, where my constituency has seven wards, and 40% of the recipients were children. I am told that the full data for December has yet to be collated, which means that the true figure is even higher. I was deeply shocked to see that nearly one quarter of the recipients were concentrated in just one ward of my constituency. Knowsley food bank, from April 2017 until the present day, has fed 648 of my constituents, 44% of whom were children. Knowsley accounts for just two wards in my constituency.

It should be noted that the data is provided by the Trussell Trust itself. As many colleagues have said, the Government do not collect any data whatever, on either the levels of food bank use or the number of food banks. The Government say that that is to avoid placing an undue burden on food bank volunteers, but I argue that it is to try to minimise the focus on the fact that, under this Government, people are going hungry at astonishing and unforgivable rates.

FareShare Merseyside has told me that it was busier than ever in redistributing surplus food from the food industry to charities and community centres in 2016-17. It is not just food banks that are helping. They do a significant job, but there is lots going on. In that year, FareShare Merseyside contributed towards in excess of 1,142,000 meals across the city region, feeding more than 19,000 vulnerable people every week. In St Helens alone, it has 14 member organisations to which it provides food.

The Government do not collect any data on children arriving at school hungry. Why are our schools providing breakfast to hundreds of thousands of children? Teachers noticed children could not concentrate to learn and were sleepy, simply because they were hungry. “You can always tell if a child has eaten breakfast—they concentrate more in class and behave better, too.” That is what teachers say.

Forty-three per cent. of teachers recently polled in a survey believe that their breakfast club may have to close in the next few years. Nationally, that equates to 6,700 clubs, which feed 200,000 children. Eighty-six per cent. of those polled said that the closures would be down to lack of school funding. Schools, local government and everybody who helps are affected by cuts. Most worrying of all, more than one third of teachers in schools with breakfast clubs that have already closed down said that they had noticed a decline in exam results, and then the Government tell us that Merseyside is not doing too well on education. A lack of decent, nutritious food must not hold our children back for life. The Government should be ashamed. They should stop lecturing us about children not learning and start feeding the children. What is happening will serve only to entrench the social divide in the UK for generations and it must be stopped.

Almost 30% of my constituents are paid below the Living Wage Foundation’s living wage of £8.25 an hour. That is simply not enough to get by on, let alone to save to provide a cushion to fall on. In my constituency, 27% of the children—more than one quarter—live in poverty. In addition, a higher proportion of my constituents than average suffer from long-term sickness—38% of the working age population.

The Government’s policies actively contribute to the situation, causing starvation. Their own Secretary of State resigned after the 2016 Budget because of the planned £3 billion of cuts to universal credit, among other policies, which cumulatively saw the poorest families— 2.5 million of them—up to £2,100 a year worse off, when the Government were cutting £20 billion off tax for those at the top.

The recent reduction from six weeks to five weeks for receipt of universal credit payments is not enough. Delays will remain a contributing factor in food poverty. The Government are tinkering at the edges of a crisis. In areas where universal credit has been rolled out, food bank use has increased by 30% in the following six months. It is immoral to expect families to survive for five weeks with nothing. I fear for my vulnerable constituents in low-paid, insecure employment, who have never—and nor have their extended families—been able to afford to save. The Government are also granting applications for an advance of universal credit. I believe that that must immediately be changed to an up-front advance as part of all applications for universal credit, with an opportunity to opt out of the advance, rather than having to ask for a loan or advance.

On 11 January the DWP’s consultation on free school meal eligibility criteria—and an earnings threshold of £7,400 as a requirement for a child to receive a free school meal—closed. The same Government who implemented £20 billion of tax cuts are consulting on reducing the eligibility criteria. Despite Ministers’ insistence that 50,000 more children would qualify, the Children’s Society is adamant that the measure would mean more than 1 million children losing their school meal—which, nearly always, will be the only meal they have. In the region of Merseyside, just under 24,000 would no longer have free school meals, and in the two local authorities that cover my constituency, St Helens and Knowsley, 4,300 children would no longer be eligible for a free school meal. The consultation is over. There must not be any reduction in the eligibility criteria for free school meals, or some children could lose the best source of nutrition they get in a day.

I am pleased to be opening Company Shop and Community Shop in my constituency next week—I am pleased because it will bring help, but not pleased that it is needed. I applaud the initiative, which works with big-name retailers and manufacturers across the country, taking surplus food and products from them. That enables food prices to be significantly reduced, and leaves families with a sense of pride in purchasing their own goods. Many families do not go to the food bank because their pride does not allow them, so many more than we know about are hungry. I am delighted to hear that new jobs will be created as a result of the shops opening. Poverty is not inevitable. It is a result of Government inertia and incompetence, and their immoral behaviour towards people. The Government owe vulnerable people their dignity and must work to build a more just society.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alok Sharma]

I will come on to that point, but there are complex reasons why people use food banks. I want to go back to the point about work being the best route out of poverty. It is the case that across the country around 75% of children from workless families moved out of poverty when their parents entered full-time work.

Let me come on to universal credit.

[Ms Rimmer]

Will the Minister give way?

[Alok Sharma]

I will make some progress. I have taken a lot of interventions. Perhaps the hon. Lady will let me continue for a moment.

When it comes to reform, universal credit lies at the heart of transforming the welfare system. Universal credit supports those who can work and cares for those who cannot, while being fair to the taxpayer. [Interruption.] I would just say to the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) that before this role I was the Housing Minister and I had the opportunity to do an engagement tour around the country, meeting social housing tenants with the aim of producing a Green Paper, and I met around 1,200 social housing tenants across the country. There was a discussion around universal credit and I have to tell hon. Members that the vast majority of people I talked to felt that, in principle, universal credit was absolutely right: it is simple, it makes sense and it helps to deliver the benefits that people need on a timely basis. I will come on to talk about the changes that were introduced in the Budget, because we always want to ensure that things can be done better.