Child Food Poverty

Steven Bonnar Excerpts

Monday 24th May 2021 Westminster Hall

[Steven Bonnar (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I commend the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) for securing this important debate. We all know that this Tory Government are never short of, or far from, a scandal, but this petition raises one of the most shameful scandals—4.3 million children living and growing up in poverty in the UK. That is nine pupils in every classroom of 30. It is an absolutely outrageous statistic for one of the world’s richest countries.

The Government can start to address this woeful record today by expanding access to free school meals to every child under 16 who currently lives below the poverty line, and by implementing the recommendations from the national food strategy to provide meals and activities during holiday periods to stop children going hungry. I must commend North Lanarkshire Council in my own constituency for its groundbreaking Club 365, which facilitates play and nutrition throughout holiday periods, and has been in place for the past couple of years.

Furthermore, the Government could increase the value of Healthy Start vouchers and expand that scheme today. Tens of thousands of families in the United Kingdom every year are not getting enough food to live on and are being forced to turn to non-state, charitable aid. Of course, we see the rise in food banks across every constituency in the UK.

It can be no coincidence that this new phenomenon of growing hunger has emerged alongside a wide range of draconian policies from the UK Government and the restructuring of the country’s welfare system since 2010. With reductions in welfare support year on year, the number of people, including families with children, going hungry is rising at an alarming rate and constitutes a troubling development in the world’s fifth largest economy.

New figures published by the Department for Work and Pensions on household food insecurity showed that between 2010 and last year, 19% of children lived in households with either low or very low food security, and of those children in poverty, 38% are in households with low or very low food security. That is new and stark data, and it is a stark reminder that child poverty has been rising in every part of the UK, even before the pandemic struck. The challenge now for the Government is to take every possible step to ensure that no child is born into a life of poverty.

Unlike the Tory Government, the Scottish Government have taken bold steps to address child poverty. The introduction of our new Scottish child payment, which is unique across the UK, has been described by many anti-child poverty charities as absolutely game changing in the fight against child poverty. The payment, worth £40 every four weeks, has already benefited thousands of families on low incomes in Scotland. Additionally, the Scottish Government are providing support worth around £5,000 by the time a child turns six through the Best Start grant, Best Start foods and the Scottish child payment.

Time is beyond us, so I will just conclude by saying that the UK Government need to recognise that endemic poverty is neither accidental nor inevitable. Social security is a fundamental and inalienable human right. The safety net that it provides has never been more important, and nor has it ever been more scandalous and unnecessary that so many children in our society are continuing to go hungry.

[Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)]

I call Ian Byrne. Please, no more than two and a half minutes.