Food Banks (Scotland)

Russell Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 19th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Dr Whiteford]

I do not doubt that the hon. Gentleman will have a higher quality of intervention, but I will not give way at this point, simply because I am conscious of time. Clearly, I have some things to say in this debate and I want to get through them in the time allotted.

The other 50% of the increase in demand for food parcels is from people whose benefits have been delayed or who are having problems with the administration of the benefit system. There is no doubt that the dramatic increase in the demand for emergency support is a consequence of the recession, and the increased numbers of people who face sudden unemployment, or cuts in their working hours or real-terms cuts in their wages. However, demand has also been increased by the austerity measures—the response to the recession by the Government—and the disproportionate hit that people on low incomes, particularly those who wholly or partially depend on benefits to keep them above the breadline, have had to bear in the raft of financial cuts that we have seen during the last two years.

The changes to the benefit system have placed greater restrictions on people, and the stringent time limits on some benefits—such as employment and support allowance, and housing benefit—will only make that problem worse. Experts are warning that the real bite of these measures is still to come.

Aberdeenshire was part of the pilot scheme for the work capability assessment. I am already seeing people at my surgeries who have been assessed as fit to work who are simply not fit for work, and whose precarious health has been further jeopardised and damaged by very difficult engagement with the benefit system. Those left without entitlement are increasingly falling back on financial support from their unpaid family carers, who themselves are often in very tight financial circumstances. These are families who are finding themselves having to rely on emergency support.

The other emergency support in our social protection system, which I debated with the Minister a week ago, is the social fund. As I am sure Members are aware, the social fund currently provides crisis loans and community care grants; it is very much the last safety net of the social protection system. It will be abolished next year, with responsibility for its functions being devolved to Scotland. However, it is important to acknowledge that the Department for Work and Pensions has been managing back the social fund to its 2005-06 level, despite the increasing demands on it, and the money being devolved next year will represent a cut of about 50% on the 2009-10 level.

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

rose—

[Dr Whiteford]

I would be delighted to take an intervention from the hon. Gentleman, but I will not take any more interventions after this one.

[Mr Brown]

I will do my best to be brief, Mr Betts.

I say to the hon. Lady that the social fund that is now finding its way into the hands of local authorities has not been ring-fenced. Does she share my view that what we may find is some local authorities to a certain extent misusing that money, rather than targeting it at the areas where it is most needed? She should keep in mind that local government is under pressure under her party’s Government.

[Dr Whiteford]

I am aware that the social fund has not been ring-fenced across the UK. There is a strong argument for ring-fencing it. I am not aware of the details of the welfare fund that the Scottish Government are putting in place, but I know that it will be a national fund. I expect that that fund probably will be ring-fenced, but that is a question that needs to be addressed to Scottish Ministers.

I am pleased that the Scottish Government have committed extra money to make up the shortfall in the social fund once it is devolved, after the cuts that have been made to it, and that there will be an opportunity for that to happen. That is one concrete way in which protection can be put in place.

I will be very quick, as I do not want to test your patience, Mr Betts. One of the assertions that has been made in the debate is that there is a lack of research in this area. When I was doing my research in preparation for the debate, I was very much informed by the low-income diet and nutrition survey, which was commissioned by the Food Standards Agency. It gave a very clear picture, and a wealth of useful information, about diet and nutrition in Scotland, and it makes it very clear that they are associated with income poverty. The most deprived 15% of the population are likely to be eating about half the recommended level of fruit and vegetables, and well above the maximum recommended level of sugar.

Health inequalities and their consequences are not the subject of this debate, but it is important that we look at the issue of food banks holistically and on the basis of the evidence, and that we understand that changes to the benefit system are having an impact across these islands. We need to put in place emergency provision, but at the same time we need to tackle the long-term drivers of income poverty and poor nutrition in our society.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Fiona O'Donnell). I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes (Lindsay Roy) on securing the debate.

It is only a week since we last had a debate in Westminster Hall on food poverty. I want quickly to mention one or two things that were raised then, and to discuss a local organisation in my area. We all know of the good work of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and we heard in the debate last week that its latest report shows that 13.2 million people in this country live in poverty. There is also the recent shocking report by Save the Children. There is no doubt that Save the Children, along with the Children’s Society and Barnardo’s, does tremendous work the length and breadth of the country. That Save the Children report, which was released in September, states that well over half of parents in poverty—some 61%—say they have cut back on food, and more than a quarter—26%—say they have skipped meals. That comes back to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Cathy Jamieson) made about mothers all too often saying, “I’ll get something later.” Those words resonate with me because I come from a large family, and on numerous occasions my mother said that, without my realising what she was really saying. We would be having a meal as a family of five children, and mother was going to get something later—that probably never happened.

I want to raise again today a point I raised in last week’s debate, because it is important that we understand just how desperate things get for people. In the Save the Children report, a parent is quoted as saying:

“A year or so ago, we literally relied on any money we raised at car boot sales to pay for food for the week. Some weeks weren’t too bad, others were dire. The British weather decided how we lived that week (when it rained, the turnout at car boot sales fell).”

It is terrible to think that people have to go to such lengths to have money for food.

I want quickly to mention the First Base Agency in Dumfriesshire, organised by a guy called Mark Frankland. Mark is real local worthy. He initially set up the agency to help and support individuals with drug and alcohol problems, and from the success of that he went on to work with veterans, providing them with support through a gardening scheme. They managed to produce some fresh vegetables, and I suspect he must have also had some kind of livestock, because he ended up producing eggs as well.

Mark is a well-known guy who does a lot of work, and the scheme for veterans was therapeutic work, to get some guys back on the road. He has developed a local charity into a business, and that business provides a factoring service for a local registered social landlord, thereby creating a number of jobs that are given over to veterans. Mark has also, very much under the radar, provided food parcels. He is not a recognised food bank of the kind that colleagues have described this morning and in other debates, but he has provided food parcels for a number of years to some of the most vulnerable individuals and families in the local area. Support through churches and local charities has enabled it all to happen. I spoke to Mark yesterday, and he told me that between November last year and November this year the demand for food parcels trebled. One of the parcels that he manages to provide lasts a family for about three days.

From a wider perspective, all too often we hear comparisons in the House between the UK’s deficit and debt and those of Greece and Spain, with people saying that we are in the same ball park. The fact is that about 2.5% of the population in Greece and Spain is supported by voluntary sector handouts, and that equates to 10 times the support we are experiencing in the UK through food banks and other charities. I absolutely balk, therefore, at the idea that we should be compared with those countries, and I am pleased that we are not there along with them because I wonder what some families, households and communities would be experiencing if the situation was as bad as that.

Colleagues have mentioned the Department for Work and Pensions, and I want to give an example similar to the one that my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes gave. A single father with three children fell foul of the DWP—the Department, not the staff; the staff are only delivering the systems and policies that are dictated to them. The unfortunate gentleman fell foul of the DWP when he missed an appointment, an appointment of which he said he definitely never received notification. Sanctions were imposed, including a two-month suspension. A father and three children had to simply get by—on what? Fresh air? People must have some kind of support. Frustratingly, the guy was unemployed. He had spare time on his hands, so he went along to the First Base Agency and helped Mark Frankland. He saw it as a duty to do a bit of voluntary work for someone who had helped him in the past.

[Fiona O'Donnell]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the Government are not just dividing rich against poor, but the deserving poor against the undeserving poor?

[Mr Brown]

Absolutely. I could not put it better myself.

So with a two-month suspension and no money, how could the family cope? What kind of lesson or way of existing is that? What kind of environment is that in which to bring up children? Let us not forget the point that my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian made about the need for children to be fed properly, to enable them to develop at a young age. It is life experiences in the early years that have the most impact on children.

We have talked about the SNP Government, and I appreciate that that is not an issue for the Minister to respond to, unless he finds that he has the same train of thought as I do on it. Local government is, however, under real pressure, and what Mark Frankland at the First Base Agency has been experiencing for a long time is social services referring families to him for food parcels. I have spoken to Mark in the past 24 hours and he has told me that social workers will arrive at his office today to pick up food parcels to deliver to some of their clients. A little extra money into social services from the Scottish Government would go a long way.

[Dr Whiteford]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the cuts to local government in Scotland have been at a lower level than in other parts of the UK, and that the Scottish Government have worked closely with Convention of Scottish Local Authorities to mitigate the impact on low-income families, through, for example, work to secure council tax benefit where it has been abolished?

[Mr Brown]

I identify where the hon. Lady’s loyalty lies, but a question that she and her colleagues in the Scottish Government need to answer is: why were we seeing cuts to local government in Scotland three years before the block grant was cut? There was no need for that whatever. I know that the money was not as great as she might have expected, but we saw cuts three years before the block grant was reduced.

In conclusion, the dilemma that families face—some of which I hope we share—will only be compounded as we move through the next 12 months. There will be universal credit for those in receipt of benefits, and it will be delivered directly to them, so housing benefit and council tax credit will be delivered to the person applying, rather than going directly to where it should be going. Families will get the money, and then the dilemma for them will be: will they pay their rent, or their council tax?

[Cathy Jamieson]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the bedroom tax is already having an impact, and that it will also be a major feature?

[Mr Brown]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We will compound the problem when people have to make choices. Is it a meal on the table, a pair of shoes for the son or daughter, or paying the rent? I, thankfully, do not have to make those choices, but I am there with people who have to make such difficult decisions.