Food Banks

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

The Trussell Trust started under Labour—it hid that away—and the removal of the spare room subsidy in the private sector started under the Labour Government in 2008. Rewriting history does not work. The British public want to know the truth: those on the Labour Benches ruined the economy and we are getting it back on track.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

I am very grateful to the Minister. On the one hand, she has spent a long time telling us that there are now many more people in work, although the rate of employment has still not returned to pre-recession levels. But if —[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. The hon. Lady must be brief, but she must be heard.

[Sheila Gilmore]

If everything is going so well, why since 2010 has there been such a substantial increase in the number of people using food banks? The only explanation can be the Government’s changes to welfare policy.

[Esther McVey]

Tomorrow, when Hansard comes out, we can read the full explanation, because hon. Members probably do not want me to go through it again. Actually, it was because of the crash, the overspend, the personal debt and the public debt left to us by those on the Opposition Benches.

Another issue that has been raised is zero-hours contracts. They happened under Labour: the numbers in 2013 are the same as the numbers in 2000. In fact, the number of zero-hours contracts went up by 75% from 2005 to 2009, something that those on the Opposition Benches did absolutely zero about. It is the Leader of the Opposition’s Doncaster council that presides over the biggest number, within his council. Again, there is a lot of fluster and a lot of bluster. The Opposition did nothing in government and they are doing nothing to control their Labour councils, yet we are now picking up the pieces.

--- Later in debate ---

[Roger Williams]

I am sure that is the case. I am trying to respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood). I believe that the current benefits system is not fit for purpose and that this Government are making progress to make it better, but there is still a huge amount of work to be done. The conditionality of so many benefits leads to difficulties. In my constituency, Jobcentre Plus seems to be using different criteria in different towns to impose sanctions on people. Obviously, when sanctions are imposed, people are left in great difficulty.

[Sheila Gilmore]

As a member of one of the governing parties, what is the hon. Gentleman saying to Ministers about that sanctioning disaster?

[Roger Williams]

I have already written to a Minister and I am going to meet them to find out why the sanctions in different jobcentres have different criteria; why they have different systems for writing to and contacting people in order to encourage them to attend meetings; and why, if people do not attend those meetings, they get sanctioned.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hurd]

There was no acknowledgement of the past and no real acknowledgement of some of the complexities underlying this situation. The Labour Front-Bench team came here simply to make political capital and I think lost the respect of the House. It would have been nice to hear some acknowledgement from the Opposition Front Benchers or Back Benchers of the improvement in the economy and the fact that we now have more than 30 million people in work—a record number—and of the performance of this Government in a few years to get this economy back on track.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I thank the Minister for giving way. I think he was somewhat churlish in not acknowledging that many Opposition Members are also extremely grateful to those who work in food banks. When I went to my local church-run food bank, I found that the people there were not political; the one thing they wanted to tell me was how shocked they were that so many of the people coming to them were suffering from sanctions—and sanctions not as a last resort but as a first resort.