Benefits and Food Banks (County Durham)

Tom Blenkinsop Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Phil Wilson]

My hon. Friend—a fellow Durham MP—and I both know what is happening in our schools now. Children are turning up hungry, and we know of cases where teachers have paid for food for the children out of their own pockets. That is a crucial issue in areas such as ours.

Will the Minister tell the House whether there are problems with benefit claim processing centres hitting their targets? If there are not, why do data from food banks prove there is a problem? There seems to be a huge difference between what independent charities are saying and what the Government are saying. Other worrying statistics show that just under 20% of those using food banks are in work and use them because their income does not cover the cost of electricity, rent and food, and something has to give. More significantly, a third of recipients are children. Food banks now claim that demand is outstripping supply, and the welfare reforms have yet to be implemented.

Durham county council estimates that 119,600 households in County Durham— just over half of all households in the county—will be affected by universal credit when it is introduced. The council also estimates that changes to benefits and tax credits will see each household lose £680 a year, and that £151 million will be taken out of the local economy. Around 8,500 people in so-called under-occupied properties will be affected by the bedroom tax. That is an insidious measure which, anecdotally, is starting to be seen as another reason people are using food banks.

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

In Tees Valley, which is partly covered by my hon. Friend’s constituency, we are aware that unemployment for 16 to 24-year-olds is above 32%, long-term claimants of jobseeker’s allowance have more than doubled since mid-2010, and Middlesbrough council estimates that 10,000 children are now living in poverty. We also know today from ITV news in the north-east that £500,000 in rent arrears has not been paid due to the bedroom tax. Does my hon. Friend think that those four factors are contributing to the rising use of food banks?

[Phil Wilson]

Of course they are. Some people say it is an issue of supply and that because there are more food banks, more people are using them, but there is definitely demand out there. The statistics being quoted have massive consequences. No one is denying that welfare provision needs reform, but whatever any Government do in that regard, they must be prepared to face the consequences. When the welfare bill is increased by £20 billion, it is obvious that the reforms are not working. The increase in the number of food banks proves that the holes in the safety net are getting bigger.

The key issue for people using food banks seems to be the delay in the receipt of benefits. Yesterday, in the other place Lord Freud said:

“The Trussell Trust has said that one reason why people have come to it is benefit delays. I checked through the figures and in the period of that increase the number of delays that we had had reduced.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 2 July 2013; Vol. 746, c. 1072.]

Whoever we talk to in the food bank movement, they say that delays to benefits are the main reason people are referred to their centres. Surely it is not for food banks to be the stop-gap because the system is not working. Will the Minister say what his Department is doing to resolve that issue?

What kind of people attend food banks? They include the mother who lost her job 16 months ago and is distressed that her nine-year-old child has not eaten fresh fruit or vegetables for most of that period. Another young mother did not have any food in the house and was worried about how she would feed her children when they returned home from school that day. There were many more examples from all over Durham and indeed the UK—all harrowing and all tragic.

Olivier De Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food stated in an article in The Guardian on 27 February:

“Food banks should not be seen as a “normal” part of national safety nets…Food banks depend on donations, and they are often run by volunteers: they are charity-based, not rights-based, and they should not be seen as a substitute for the robust social safety nets to which each individual has a right.”

I agree with him. I also agree with him when he says that although society might not have completely broken down because of the significant increase in the number of food banks, it is fair to say that the increase reveals where society is broken. As I have said, the safety net might be there, but the holes in it are getting bigger, allowing more people to fall through.

In the other place yesterday, in reply to a question from Baroness Howarth of Breckland about the monitoring of food banks, Lord Freud said:

“It is not the job of the DWP to monitor this provision, which is done on a charitable basis.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 2 July 2013; Vol. 746, c. 1073.]

I would respectfully say to the Minister that, as there are now 500,000 of our fellow citizens using food banks, I believe the time has come to monitor food bank usage. The increase could be down to supply, but it is certainly down to demand. Why is it that the three main reasons for people using food banks are delay in benefit receipt, benefit changes and low incomes? Domestic violence and homelessness are other reasons for usage. Surely a responsible Government would start revising their approach to welfare reform by using the data acquired from food banks to help to close the holes in the welfare safety net that are so obviously opening up.

The Government state that one reason for the increase in the number of food banks is that Jobcentre Plus now refers people on to them. However, the House of Commons Library standard note on food banks and food poverty states, on page 13:

“While increasing awareness of the existence of food banks may well be a factor in explaining recent growth in usage...the role of Jobcentre Plus in this regard is difficult to quantify since it does not collate statistics on food bank referrals.”

In addition, referrals from Jobcentre Plus did not start until September 2011, by which time the number of people being fed by food banks was increasing from about 60,000 in the previous year to 128,000 by the end of 2011.

Perhaps it would be in the Minister’s own interest to start collecting data; it would certainly be in the interest of those being fed by food banks if the Government were to look at what we can do to close the holes in the safety net. It is not only me saying that; the UN special rapporteur on the right to food believes so too. He said in the same article that I quoted earlier:

“The lesson of the current upsurge in soup kitchens and food pantries is not that we need more food banks or fewer food banks, it is everything else—the social safety net above and around it—that needs to change, and the direction of that change can be oriented by the lessons that food banks, and the stories of their clientele, teach us.”

The Government must not be allowed to renege on their responsibilities because charities are left to pick up the pieces. My request of the Minister is to learn from the food bank phenomenon, because it is not going to go away. It is only going to get bigger. If we are not careful, the social safety net built up over the decades will be dismantled and put away somewhere as a memory.

I would also like to hear the Minister’s response to the call from Church Action on Poverty and Oxfam in their report “Walking the breadline” for the Government to set up an inquiry by the House of Commons Work and Pensions Select Committee into any relationship between benefit changes and food poverty. Would the Minister welcome such an inquiry? The report also called for regular publication by the DWP of data on benefit delays, errors and sanctions, for monitoring by the DWP of the effect of universal credit on food poverty, and for the recording and monitoring of food bank referrals made by Government agencies. I know that the Minister will deny this, but I believe that, if we are not careful, food banks will become a part of the welfare system—and that it will happen by default.

Finally, I would like to thank the volunteers who make the food bank network work. They include Peter MacLellan, who co-ordinates the food banks in County Durham for the Durham Christian Partnership, and Ernie Temple who runs the food bank at St Clare’s church in Newton Aycliffe. I also want to thank Rachael Mawston and her team at Excel Local for all the hard work they put into running their food bank, and Councillor Peter Brookes, Michael King and Rev. Michael Gobbett of Sedgefield Churches Together, who run the food banks in the Trimdons and who are looking to expand into Sedgefield, Fishburn and Deaf Hill. I am sure that the Minister will applaud their hard work. There will always be those who fall through the safety net, however well constructed it might be, and we need such people to prevent those most in need from falling through the net on to the ground. I believe that those people now have their hands full.