Food Banks

Viscount Younger of Leckie Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the long-term need for food banks.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Viscount Younger of Leckie) (Con)]

My Lords, food banks are independent charitable organisations where local communities come together to support one another. This is a great example of the generosity of spirit across the country. The Government have no formal role in monitoring or projecting the activities of food banks. However, we understand the pressures that individuals are facing, and that is why we are taking action to support people across the UK, including by increasing benefits by 10.1% in April.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

I thank the Minister for his reply and congratulate him on his new appointment; although he is experienced on the Front Bench, this is a new position.

A survey published yesterday revealed that more than half of NHS trusts and hospital boards are either providing or looking into the possibility of providing food banks for their medical staff. Six of those hospitals together revealed that more than 5,000 of their medical staff are looking for help from food banks every month, of which 550 are nurses. Is there not something fundamentally askew when, in an advanced wealthy country such as ours, people doing a hard day’s work, including essential jobs such as nursing, are unable to earn enough to live on without having to seek help from food banks? Will the Government consider setting a target date for when wages will rise enough so that people can earn enough without seeking help?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I thank the noble and right reverend Lord for his most kind words. I have clearly taken on an important but sensitive brief.

I am well aware of the issue surrounding nurses, as we all are in this House. We take this issue seriously. The first thing is to look at food bank usage. The noble and right reverend Lord might know that we have included specific questions in the family resources survey to measure and track food bank usage. The FRS is a highly recognised publication used by government and academics alike. This should draw out the information needed to look further at what we can do, particularly in the NHS sector.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, the Trussell Trust identifies a social security system that provides adequate protection as key to reducing the need for food banks, which the trust thinks are not the answer. It reports that between April and September last year nearly half a million food parcels went to children. I too welcome the Minister to his new role. What is his explanation for such an extensive need for food banks among children?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Surely that comes down to the fact that there are so many areas where people are not just feeling the pinch but really struggling to feed their families; children are very much part of that. Having said that, the Government are taking substantial action to do their best to mitigate these issues. As the noble Baroness will know, from April 2023 we are increasing benefits in line with inflation. They will rise by the September CPI inflation rate, which was 10.1%.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, the UK’s cooking skills have withered across the income spectrum. One poll found that a quarter of British people could not make beans on toast, and that four in 10 did not know how to cook an omelette. Food pantry projects say that many clients—by no means all—do not know how to use raw ingredients, but the cost of ready meals has increased by 50% over the last year. Budgeting is far harder without cooking skills. What are the Government doing to enable adults to acquire them?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My noble friend is right and makes the very good point that the better targeting of education for adults and children on how to buy and prepare food helps greatly towards better budgeting and cutting household bills. My department promotes the principles of healthy eating through platforms such as the NHS.UK website and social marketing campaigns including Healthier Families. This campaign aims to help families improve their health and well-being by encouraging them to eat healthier and move more, and it produces practical, evidence-based healthy eating advice, such as step-by-step recipes.

[Lord Woodley (Lab)]

My Lords, the majority of people—or a large percentage of people, at least—are on universal credit because work does not pay and wages are too low. Does the Minister agree that wages should rise, particularly for our noble public servants, and that the best way to improve your wages is to join a trade union? I hope he agrees with me.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I echo what I think these Benches have said before: trade unions have a valuable role in our life. We have provided cost of living support worth over £37 billion for 2022-23, including the £400 non-repayable discount to eligible households provided through the energy bills support scheme. In addition, as the noble Lord will know, we have the energy price guarantee, which will save a typical British household around £900 this winter. I am sure there is more that we can do, but we are very aware of the issues.

[Baroness Janke (LD)]

My Lords, I too welcome the Minister to his new role, and I am grateful to hear that there is a survey about the use of food banks. As more and more people become dependent on food banks, it is quite clear that the 832,000 children using them are not receiving the sort of diet they need for their intellectual and physical development, and that emergency food cannot provide the balanced diet that the Government recommend. What specific measures will the Government take to ensure that children in poor families are not even more disadvantaged by not receiving adequate and proper nourishment for their development?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right that nourishment for children is incredibly important, including in schools. She will know that we have extended free school meals to more groups of children than any other Government over the past half a century, and we remain committed to supporting the most disadvantaged children. Under the benefits-based criteria, 1.9 million of the most disadvantaged pupils are eligible for and claiming a free school meal. As she will know, this extends to around 1.25 million more infants, so it covers that area too.

[The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford]

My Lords, given the data published by the Trussell Trust in December which revealed that 57% of people referred to food banks who are in receipt of universal credit face government deductions from their or their partner’s benefits income, could the Minister outline what steps the Government will take to reform the debt management process for universal credit?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

That is a very important part of our programme, and the Government recognise the importance of safeguarding the welfare of claimants who have incurred debt. The primary aim of deductions in universal credit is to protect vulnerable claimants by providing a last-resort repayment method for arrears of essential services. With the extreme pressures there are at the moment, I reassure the right reverend Prelate that we are doing our very best to look at what more we can do to help people who get into severe debt.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I welcome the Minister to his new brief; I very much look forward to engaging with him in the months ahead. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, for her service in this role.

In 2010-11, the Trussell Trust ran around 35 food banks. Last year, it ran 1,400 of them. Does this not go to the point made by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, that something has happened and food banks have moved from the margin to the mainstream of government policy? I want to ask the Minister a really simple question: do the Government think that that is okay or that it is a problem? If it is the latter, what are they going to do about it?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

It is not okay. It is fair to say that we are continually looking at different ways in which we can help the most vulnerable, and I have set out some of them to the House this afternoon. On food banks, which are linked to the noble Baroness’s question, as I said, the family resources survey will help us; it is important for us to know what is going on. Let me also take this opportunity to applaud all those volunteers who work in food banks; they are doing vital work to help feed those who simply do not know where their next meal is coming from.

[Baroness Seccombe (Con)]

My Lords, in the past three weeks, whether in the newspaper, on TV or even in our own homes, food has seemed to dominate. Can my noble friend the Minister tell me whether anybody or any group in food production can assist those who, for whatever reason, seem unable to provide food for their own table?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

As I said earlier, food banks are doing a magnificent job at the moment in these very difficult times. Defra is continuing to work with food retailers and producers to explore a range of measures that they can take to ensure the availability of affordable food—for example, by maintaining value ranges, price matching and price-freezing measures. It might be worth pointing out—some noble Lords will know this from going into supermarkets—that Asda, for example, has launched a scheme called Just Essentials, which gives customers access to a much larger range of good-quality products at the lowest prices, and Morrisons has a Help for Households scheme. Supermarkets are doing their very best to step in and lower their prices for those who are most vulnerable.