Max Wilkinson
Main Page: Max Wilkinson (Liberal Democrat - Cheltenham)Department Debates - View all Max Wilkinson's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
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Max Wilkinson (Cheltenham) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. I congratulate the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) on securing this important debate.
Most people assume that Cheltenham, the town I represent, is a well-heeled sort of place. The impression many people have is of grand Regency terraces, beautiful architecture and the prosperity that comes with excellent schools and a thriving cyber-security sector, but I regret to tell hon. Members that that is not the whole story.
Large sections of our population struggle. In swathes of Cheltenham, people live in poverty, providing demand for six food banks. I am told that every week in Cheltenham about 550 households access a food bank or food pantry. That is thousands of people. In 2023-24 there were 1,068 households accessing a food bank or food pantry for the first time ever. During that year, more than 8,000 people were, at one point or another, in receipt of a food parcel. That is in Cheltenham, a prosperous town.
In the current financial year, the local council has allocated £45,240 to support those food banks, supported by charitable donations made by generous Cheltenham people. When I visited the food pantries and spoke to staff and customers, the picture I found was one of people who simply want to get on in life. None of them wants to be at a food bank, but circumstances—nearly always beyond their control—have led them to that point. They are united in wanting nothing more than fairness.
There are some very practical steps that could be taken to achieve that fairness. First, lifting the two-child benefit cap would remove hundreds of thousands of children from poverty at a single stroke. If that were done alongside the expansion of free school meals to all children in poverty, the impact could be extremely powerful. We also need reform of universal credit. All those measures would mean fewer children turning up at school hungry. They would mean fewer children arriving home from school hungry. They would mean fewer families desperately trying to make ends meet by using food banks, and fewer pensioners being forced to do the same.
This is all very achievable. All we need to do is work within the systems that already exist and show the kindness and compassion that lies within all of us. On the subject of kindness and compassion, I will finish by paying tribute to the brilliant local people in Cheltenham working at facilities that help people who cannot pay their bills. There are too many to name them all, but I will mention two: Faith Rooke-Matthews in Springbank and Alison Hutson at the Cornerstone centre. We thank them and their colleagues for all they do.