Food Poverty Strategy

Owen Thompson Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

Exactly 10 years have passed since, in April 2014, an all-party parliamentary inquiry was launched to investigate hunger and food poverty in these islands. Led by the great Frank Field—now Lord Field of Birkenhead—who at that time was a distinguished Member of this House, the inquiry’s report contained a powerful rallying cry. It said:

“The simple but devastating fact that hunger stalks this country should confront each of the main political parties with a most basic and fundamental political challenge. With rising national income nobody could have predicted that in 2014 there would be a significant number of hungry people in Britain. But there are.”

In identifying the forces behind that hunger, the inquiry noted:

“Something fundamental is happening in advanced Western economies which throws into doubt the effectiveness of a national minimum below which no one is allowed to fall. It is the erosion of an effective national minimum that has led to the existence of hunger and the rise of the food bank movement in its wake.”

The fact that I will outline some of those same specific forces later in this debate, and the fact that the number of people having to use food banks has increased relentlessly since the inquiry published its report, is a shocking indictment of the UK Government’s response to hunger and food poverty over the past 10years. It is also a reminder of why an effective strategy is so necessary—to prevent yet another full decade of lengthening queues for food banks and rising levels of hunger.

The Government’s family resources survey recently found that between 2019-20 and 2022-23, household food insecurity increased for the UK as a whole from 8% to 10%. Larger families with children are particularly vulnerable to this form of injustice. A survey commissioned last year by Feeding Britain found that although 3% of households with no children reported accessing a food bank, that proportion increased to 6% among those with one child and 7% among those with two children. The highest proportion—13%—was found among those with three or more children. In a similar vein, adults living in a household with three or more children were almost four times as likely to report skipping meals every day because there was not enough money for food than those with one child, and almost six times as likely than those with no children.

The Minister will know that this injustice is felt by people both in and out of paid employment. Among members surveyed by the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union, the number relying on food banks increased between 2021 and 2023 from 7% to 17%. Those relying on friends and family have gone from 20% to 34%, and those eating less have gone from 35% to 57%. Of those surveyed, 80% are eating cheaper—unhealthier—meals, 55% have been worried about running out of food and 45% have skipped meals.

Even closer to home, the Minister may be aware that food bank usage among staff at the Department for Work and Pensions increased from 8% of those surveyed by the Public and Commercial Services Union in 2022 to 11% in 2023. Perhaps she could explain why so many staff working for the Department for Work and Pensions are only paid the national minimum wage. The Food Foundation’s recent survey showed that in January, 15% of UK households were experiencing food insecurity. Among households with children, 20% were experiencing food insecurity, and 24% of households of non-white ethnicity were food insecure—1.6 times more than households of white ethnicity. Of those in some kind of employment, 15% were food insecure.

Stark health inequalities are highly prevalent, particularly in diet-related poor health. The most deprived communities are affected disproportionately by much higher rates of food-related ill health and disease, from obesity to type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and dental decay. Recent reports show an increase in hospital admissions for nutrient deficiencies. The data should ring alarm bells. The longevity of the cost of living crisis means that food insecurity has become the norm for many households who are unable to buy staple nutritious products. Anyone who volunteers for a food bank in Glasgow, like in any other asylum dispersal area, will tell of the need to assist those who seek sanctuary in the UK. Asylum seekers receive a payment of £45 a week—equivalent to what a youth trainee received 30 years ago.

How should the Government respond to those alarming figures? Fortunately, there are two recent precedents—from the Biden Administration in America and the Scottish Government under Humza Yousaf, both of whom have published strategies to eliminate hunger and food poverty within the coming years. A consistent thread running through both those strategies is a combination of specific policies to raise household income levels, improve access to nutritional support schemes and accelerate the development of innovative projects that bring affordable food to areas where people are struggling most. It is that threefold combination that I would like to propose to the Minister by way of an effective food poverty strategy that can eliminate the need for food banks in these islands by 2030.

First, the 2014 inquiry identified food bank usage as resulting from

“delays and errors in the processing and payment of benefits, the sometimes heavy-handed issuing of benefit sanctions…a sudden loss of earnings through reduced hours or unemployment, the absence of free school meals, the accumulation of problem debt or, for some, even a lost purse.”

It added:

“A further group of factors similarly exposes the vulnerability of many poor families. The poor are penalised for their poverty with a raft of disproportionate charges for basic utilities. They pay more for their energy through prepayment meters, are more likely to be charged to withdraw cash from their local machine, and often are unable to take advantage of the best mobile phone contracts—meaning they are likely to be just one bill away from needing to use a food bank.”

Today, around half of all households in receipt of universal credit are having an average of £60 a month deducted from their income, much of which is to repay the loans needed to cover the five-week delay at the beginning of a new claim. In my Glasgow South West constituency, almost a quarter of a million pounds per month was being deducted last year. At this stage, I would provide similar figures about the impact of the Government’s sanctions policy in Glasgow South West, but the Government decided last year that figures would no longer be made available to Members of this House on the amount of money being sanctioned in the constituencies that we represent. However, thanks to Dr David Webster at the University of Glasgow, we know that a total of 538,842 universal credit sanctions were imposed in the year ending October 2023, and 419,219 individual universal credit claimants received at least one sanction.

Food banks across these islands have identified those two policies as the two big recruiting sergeants for emergency food aid, so the first plank of a food poverty strategy must be to reform or get rid of those deductions and sanctions, which are applied so harshly as to leave people hungry. I would place the abolition of the two-child limit on social security payments in a similar category, as well as the introduction of a formal mechanism for advising the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on the benefit levels that are required each year to safeguard all households from hunger and food poverty, and the payment of fair wages throughout the public sector and the economy as a whole so that a fair day’s work genuinely delivers a fair day’s pay to all. We need to end the scandal of those working in hospitality not being able to buy food for themselves. We need to end insecure work and guarantee workers their hours of work. We also need firm action against the poverty premium, which still results in poorer households missing out on the best and fairest deals for essential living costs.

Secondly, there are different programmes available specifically to make nutritious food available to people who are at risk of food poverty, but awareness and take-up of those programmes has never been as high as it could be. As such, can the Minister tell me whether the Government will undertake to work with all devolved Administrations and local authorities to ensure that they have the tools they need to automatically identify and register all eligible households for those programmes? That is something that featured heavily in the Biden strategy, and could extend much-needed help to hundreds of thousands of children across these islands.

Thirdly, I am proud to have set up the Good Food Scotland programme, which now runs seven affordable food larders and community shops across Glasgow, including those in Nitshill, Cardonald and Linthouse in my constituency. They serve 2,000 members with fresh, nutritious food at a low cost, helping to fill the gap between big supermarkets and food banks. That approach protects those members from food poverty with dignity and choice, and we expect to be running 10 across the city of Glasgow by the end of this year.

[Owen Thompson (Midlothian) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent contribution on the importance of the need for a food strategy. He has highlighted the volunteers and groups across Glasgow that he works with; will he join me in also celebrating the volunteers in Midlothian who help to run the Mayfield and Easthouses Development Trust pantry, the Woodburn pantry, the Gorebridge Beacon pantry, the Newtongrange Development Trust pantry, the Steading community fridge in Rosewell, and the Food Facts Friends pantry and community fridge that I recently visited, along with the Midlothian food bank at Gorebridge parish church and various pantries run by Cyrenians across Midlothian, which all make such an amazing contribution?