Food Banks

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the excellent work of the Antioch centre and Myrtle house in my constituency, and to those who volunteer to collect food from supermarkets.

It saddens me that, in spite of us raising this problem many times before, the Government still have not done anything about it. Instead of seeing a drop, we are actually seeing a rise, documented by others today, in the number of people going to food banks. I was particularly disappointed that the Minister did not seek to tackle or name the causes of that rise. He did not talk about benefit delays, low income or benefit changes.

It is a mark of indignity to have to go to a food bank. Nobody goes to one out of choice, and we should be trying to restore dignity. Believe me, people on the lowest incomes know where to find the cheapest food. Baroness Jenkin, who criticised cooking skills, has absolutely no idea. Very often, the people who live in the worst rented accommodation have the most expensive and least efficient cooking appliances and pay the most for their electricity.

On benefit sanctions, the right-wing Policy Exchange think-tank acknowledged in a report in the spring that 68,000 benefit claimants each year are having their benefit payments stopped unfairly. In addition, there are a huge number of very dubious cases where it has been very unclear why a benefit has been stopped. People have been sanctioned for appalling reasons: death, being in hospital, and having learning difficulties and not understanding what they are supposed to be doing. That is absolutely outrageous.

Barnardo’s highlights the real issue: the breaking of the link between benefits and inflation. In the House of Commons Library note, the specialist tells us that that has never, ever happened before under any Government, whatever their colour. The link has never been broken. There is, therefore, a political choice: to sort out the country’s deficit problems on the backs of the rich and not take from the poor; or to do so on the backs of the poor and give tax breaks to millionaires.