Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 18th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mr Mark Hoban)]

I beg to move,

That this House considers that the draft Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived (European Union Document No. 15865/12 and Addenda 1 and 2) does not comply with the principle of subsidiarity for the reasons set out in Chapter 3 of the Twenty-second Report of the European Scrutiny Committee (HC 86-xxii); and in accordance with Article 6 of Protocol (No. 2) of the Lisbon Treaty on the application of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality, instructs the Clerk of the House to forward this reasoned opinion to the presidents of the European institutions.

This is the third time that I have moved a motion on this issue. My hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash), the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, is the inspiration behind this motion and I am pleased to support it. I welcome the ESC’s report on the European Commission’s proposal and I am pleased to have the opportunity to discuss it on the Floor of the House.

The Government share the Committee’s view that the Commission’s proposal is not consistent with the principle of subsidiarity. The proposal would establish a new instrument: the fund for European aid for the most deprived. It is intended to replace, from 2014, the European Union’s food distribution programme for the most deprived people. The current programme distributes food stocks such as butter, milk powder, beef, sugar, rice and cereals, and in 2012 the budget has a ceiling of €500 million.

At present, 20 of the 27 member states participate. The main recipients are Italy, Spain, Poland, France and Romania. The UK has not participated since 1998, after which the previous Administration withdrew from the scheme. Both this Government and the previous Administration have opposed Commission proposals since 2008 to extend the programme and expand its social dimension. The UK has consistently set out its concern that the programme does not comply with subsidiarity.

Nothing in the Commission’s proposals changes our position. As the Committee points out eloquently in its report, the Commission has not provided a convincing justification of the need for EU action. Indeed, in many ways the new proposal is even more objectionable than the current programme. It will be used not only to provide food aid, but to purchase and distribute basic consumer goods. Whereas the current scheme is optional, the new scheme will be obligatory on member states and they will be required to provide match funding of at least 15% of the costs.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I understand the Minister’s case that this could perfectly well be undertaken by national Governments, but do the Government intend to give any help to the network of food banks that is growing at a rate of, I think, three a week up and down the country and for which there is a clear need?

[Mr Hoban]

Food banks are undertaken by the voluntary sector. I will come on to the ways in which the Government provide support to people on low incomes or who are benefit recipients, in order to demonstrate why we do not believe that this EU programme is right. Our principal objection, of course, is one of subsidiarity, echoing the ESC’s comments, but also reflecting the previous Government’s stance when they withdrew from the scheme.

[Mr Hoban]

The hon. Lady is a prolific tabler of questions on this matter and I have answered one or two for her today. This initiative is undertaken by the voluntary sector. The previous Government ignored the existence of food banks. Even at the height of the recession, when long-term unemployment doubled, the previous Government simply ignored them and pretended that they were not there. This Government acknowledge the existence of food banks. They play an important role and enable people on low incomes to get food, toiletries and other basic needs, and to use their incomes or benefits for other purposes. We also signpost people to food banks, but what nobody has done yet—this point has been made on a number of occasions—is analyse who uses food banks and why.

[Stephen Timms]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Hoban]

I want to make progress. This debate is about European proposals to spend taxpayers’ money and, if I remember rightly, the Labour party seems very keen to reduce the EU budget. We look forward to hearing what the right hon. Gentleman has to say. I do not know whether he is suggesting that we should enter this programme and that he supports obligatory participation. Perhaps he will clarify his position now.

[Stephen Timms]

Does the Minister accept that the number of people using food banks is bound to go up further in the coming 12 months?

[Mr Hoban]

I am not going to predict that. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman has missed what has been happening recently. He should recognise that there are record numbers of people in work and that unemployment is falling. The number of people on out-of-work benefits has fallen by 199,000 since May 2010. I am not going to engage in making predictions, but I would have thought that he celebrates the fact that more people can look after their own families and that more people who want to work are getting into work, meeting that basic aspiration that we all want people to share.

The right hon. Gentleman did not say whether his party will sign up to the Commission’s proposal and whether they want to spend more taxpayers’ money in Europe. Hopefully he will mention that in his remarks.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister for setting out the Government’s position and look forward to hearing the European Scrutiny Committee’s views in due course.

First, we need to be absolutely clear that there is a large and growing need in the UK for the type of help that the fund would be designed to provide. The Minister mentioned FareShare a moment ago, and I notice that it gets a couple of mentions in the impact assessment of the fund, for example on page 100 of the bundle. As he rightly said, FareShare has never obtained any funding from the EU because the UK has not taken up the funding that is in place. It is slightly confusing that it is mentioned in the impact assessment, because that implies that it has been a beneficiary, but it has not. My understanding, however, is that €50 million is earmarked for the UK from the existing fund, none of which is currently handed over to the UK.

There is certainly a rapidly growing need for the service provided by FareShare and food banks such as those supported by the Trussell Trust, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) referred to a few minutes ago. The latest annual report from FareShare showed that it spent £1.6 million last year. As those who are responsible for FareShare say, a small fraction of the €50 million earmarked for the UK would enable it to transform what it is doing. FareShare provides food to 800 charities and, through them, to almost 40,000 people a day who would otherwise not have enough to eat. It is a wholesale operation supplying food to charities on the front line, and the food that it is distributes is sourced from food retailers and manufacturers, for whom the food is surplus to requirements.

A few minutes ago, the Minister said that everything was absolutely fine and that there really are not any problems in the UK: there are more people in work than ever before, and so on. However, the most recent annual FareShare report says:

“More people are suffering hardship and needing food support than ever before. Demand for our food is rocketing.”

The Minister, for reasons that I entirely understand, was unwilling to accept that the demand on food banks will go up in the next 12 months, but it will undoubtedly do so. Indeed, only yesterday, he sent me a written answer to a question that I tabled about the impact of the benefit cap in London. The information that he supplied was that, in London alone, 27,600 households will lose income when the benefit cap takes effect in April, and of those, 10,800 households will lose over £100 a week. There is no doubt at all in my mind or, I suspect, in the mind of any objective observer that the need for the kind of service that FareShare and food banks provide will only increase in the next few months.

The number of food banks supported by the Trussell Trust, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree said, is about to top the 300 mark. Three new food banks are set up every week, so the number has doubled over the past year. They are all Church-based, and involve Church members and non-members in their governance; there are 3,700 churches and 3,000 schools involved at the moment. As my hon. Friend pointed out, a quarter of a million people will receive food from a food bank in the course of this year. It is a remarkable and impressive initiative, but it is also a terrible indictment that so many people in Britain cannot afford basic food, and have to go to a food bank to obtain it.

[Luciana Berger]

We are the seventh most industrialised nation, and the number of people accessing emergency food aid has exploded. It was 26,000 under the Labour Government—I make that point, because it was 26,000 people too many—but I wish to reinforce the point that my right hon. Friend has just made. By the end of the year, a quarter of million people will have had to go to a food bank. If Members go to meet the people who go to a food bank they will see that they do not go in with smiling faces—they go in hanging their heads in shame. Does my right hon. Friend not agree that the Government should do everything in their power to make sure that no one needs to access emergency food aid in the UK?

[Stephen Timms]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend, who makes a powerful and telling point. As she will know, food banks work hard to minimise the loss of dignity involved in going to a food bank. For example, they often give out food in supermarket carrier bags so that it does not look as if people have been to a food bank. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: it is a terrible indictment of the state of our nation that a quarter of a million people have to do that this year, and the number, I confidently and regretfully predict, is bound to go up over the next few months.

Why has that terrible thing occurred? It is, of course, difficult to survive on benefits or on a low working income, and the Government’s plan to uprate benefits by less than inflation will undoubtedly make matters worse over the next few months—I have spoken already about the effects of the benefit cap that will take effect in April. The plight of those who lose more than £100 a week—as many will when the benefit cap comes in—will be desperate, and a surge of people will be driven to food banks, able to feed themselves and their families only as a result of the help they find there.

The Trussell Trust—this returns to the Minister’s direct responsibilities—makes the additional point that of the 250,000 recipients we have heard about this year, 100,000 are people for whom jobcentres have been too slow in making a payment or made a mistake. Food banks say that more people are turning up with no money because they have been sanctioned by Jobcentre Plus. Often, they have no idea why they have been sanctioned, and know only that they have got no money and must get food from the food bank.

[Luciana Berger]

My right hon. Friend will know that if someone goes to a food bank, they must tick a box giving the reason they have to access emergency food aid, and more than 40% say it is because of delays to their benefit payments. Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that in an article in The Guardian, Ministers said they aim to ensure that 80% of recipients get benefits within 16 days? Sixteen days is long enough to wait for people who have no cushion or money at all, but what about the 20% of people who have to wait for more than 16 days? Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Interventions should be brief and one at a time. The hon. Lady has made her point.

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. As well as delays there is the problem of mistakes and people being wrongly sanctioned. Friday before last I met a young man in my constituency who has been sanctioned and told that he will lose benefits for 14 months because he is attending a residential course delivered by the Prince’s Trust. An agreement between Jobcentre Plus and the Prince’s Trust means that people on Prince’s Trust activities are not sanctioned if they are unable to sign on while on a residential activity, but in that case—and, I fear, in others—the agreement is not being properly implemented by the jobcentre.

[Luciana Berger]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend and I hope not to intervene on him further. I have one more point for my final intervention. The Minister said that he welcomed the number of people who are in work, but we heard today that if people who access working tax credits call his Department’s phone line—I know this because my office called today—they are told that they have to wait three weeks for the form, and that when they get it back they must wait at least two weeks for it to be processed. Those are people in work who depend on additional funds to support them. Does he share my concern that although the Government are keen to see people in work, those are the very people who are being crucified?

[Stephen Timms]

That is an alarming report and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for passing it on. That matter will be on the Minister’s desk—[Interruption.] I beg his pardon; it will be on a desk in his former Department in the Treasury. There are worries—we have heard reports today—about delays in answering the phone at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, and I hope that my hon. Friend’s point will be addressed.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The problem is not only about delays in payments but about the complications of the system and changes in people’s circumstances, financially and otherwise. Such things all contribute to the problems for those claiming housing benefit, jobseeker’s allowance, income support and so on. Does the right hon. Gentleman think that the issue is not just about the speed of the process, but about making the system easier for people?

[Stephen Timms]

Yes, the hon. Gentleman is right. One thing that worries me is growing reports of jobcentres taking a trigger-happy approach to sanctions. People do not know why they have been sanctioned; all they know is that their money is suddenly taken away. The network of jobcentres is the Minister’s direct responsibility.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

Is the right hon. Gentleman arguing that, instead of sending a reasoned opinion on subsidiarity to the EU in respect of emergency aid, we should ask the EU to take over our social services budget?

[Stephen Timms]

I will come promptly to subsidiarity, which the hon. Gentleman properly asks me to address, but it is right first to set out the scale of the need for the kind of aid that, it is envisaged, would be supported through the fund.

The big need that exists is being addressed by organisations such as FareShare and the Trussell Trust network of food banks. There is absolutely no doubt that that need will rise in the coming year. However, as the hon. Gentleman rightly says, the question is whether funding through the EU is the best way to organise the provision of that help. The European Scrutiny Committee, of which he is a member, makes the valid point that there is no reason why the support cannot be delivered through a national initiative rather than by the EU—I agree with the Minister’s point on that.

Setting up a fund at EU level is costly and bureaucratic, so I sympathise with the Committee’s concerns, but the problem is that the UK Government are not providing any such support. I therefore have some questions for the Minister and want to press him further. Does he accept that food banks and others provide a vital and indispensible service, and that without them tens of thousands in Britain would not have enough to eat in 2012? Given the changes that we know are coming in the welfare system over the next few months, does he accept that the problem is bound to get worse? To what extent are the Government interested in what organisations such as FareShare and food banks must do? Will he confirm—I am confident that this is true—that there is currently no UK Government support for them? I believe that local authorities have been able to help in some instances, but local authority funds are being tightly squeezed, so that source is diminishing.

Will the Minister explain why the UK does not take up the €50 million share of the existing EU food distribution programme? That is not a partisan point, but a genuine inquiry—I was part of a Government who took the same view as the Minister, although the problem was a great deal smaller at that time, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree has pointed out. No doubt there is a downside of taking up that aid, but it would be helpful if the Minister could explain what it is.

Is it not a bit rich of the UK Government to argue against the new programme on the ground that they could do the same thing perfectly well—they rightly point to the principle of subsidiarity—if they in fact have no intention of doing so? If the fund is set up—as the Minister has indicated, that could happen despite UK objections—will he consider making the UK share of the fund available to FareShare and others that do such a vital job?