Food Banks

Debate between Robert Halfon and Maria Eagle

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes that the number of people using foodbanks provided by the Trussell Trust alone has increased from 41,000 in 2010 to more than 500,000 since April this year, of whom one third were children; further notes that over the last three years prices have risen faster than wages; further notes the assessment of the Trussell Trust that the key factors in the rising resort to foodbanks are rising living costs and stagnant wages, as well as problems including delays to social security payments and the impact of the under-occupancy penalty; calls on the Government to publish the results of research into foodbanks commissioned by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs which Ministers promised would be made public in the summer of 2013; and further calls on the Government to bring forward measures to reduce dependency on foodbanks, including a freeze on energy prices, a water affordability scheme, measures to end abuses of zero hours contracts, incentives to companies to pay a living wage and abolition of the under-occupancy penalty.

I welcome the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey), who has been put up to speak for the Government in this debate. Despite Ministers repeatedly stressing that

“food banks are absolutely not part of our welfare system”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 2 July 2013; Vol. 746, c. 1071.]

it is regrettable that the Department with lead responsibility for food in our country, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, has not felt it appropriate to provide a Minister either to open or to close the debate.

Is there a more damning indictment of this Government’s record than the number of people who now rely on food aid in this country? Since April this year, over half a million people have relied on assistance from the 400 food banks run by the Trussell Trust, which is double the number of food banks compared with this time last year.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I am hugely grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. Why did her Government refuse to allow jobcentres to give out food bank vouchers? It was this Government who changed that. May I also—[Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Halfon]

Why has there been a huge rise in the number of food banks in Germany and France, and across Europe? In France, one in 88 people are fed by food banks, yet in the United Kingdom the figure is one in 181.

[Maria Eagle]

The hon. Gentleman first asked me why the previous Government did not refer people who needed assistance to food banks. In a parliamentary answer in September, his own Government said that Jobcentre Plus only signposts people to food banks and does not refer people to them or issue vouchers, so there is no difference whatever.