One month before the Coalition came to power in
2010, there were 54 foodbanks, today the number has increased to 423. Some
41,000 people went to foodbanks n 2009/10, compared to 913,000 being given
three days emergency food and support last year (330,000 were children).
In contrast over the same period the number of
billionaires in the UK has gone from 53 to 100. The richest 1,000 people now have £450 billion of the wealth
– an increase of £150 billion in the past three years.
This scenario of more people going to foodbanks
whilst the super-rich get richer has come to represent the true vision of David
Cameron’s Big Society.
The demand for foodbanks has grown at the
same time as the government has been cutting away the safety net of the
welfare state. This has been done to the accompaniment of the mood music
in the media, that those on benefits are scroungers and skivers.
The danger moving forward
is that foodbanks get institutionalised, effectively becoming a
charitable alternative to the welfare state.
Some 8,318 tonnes of food was donated by the public
in last 12 months. 30,000 people have volunteered at foodbanks over the past
year. 27,000 frontline care professionals such as doctors or care workers have
vouchers to issue for foodbanks.
The growth in the number of people going to
foodbanks at a time when the economy is recovering, provides further proof that
those living in poverty are not sharing in the benefits of the recovery.
Notably, a quarter of those attending foodbanks are in low paid work.
Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams
said: “People who are using food banks are not scroungers who are cynically
trying to work the system. They are drawn from the six million working poor in
this country, people who are struggling to make ends meet in low-paid or bitty
employment.”
The Trussell Trust, which runs the foodbank network
across the UK, point out that there have been 500,000 people coming to
foodbanks in the six month period between April and September this year, 38%
more than for the comparable period for last year.
Currently, 45% of food bank referrals are due to
benefit delays and changes, including sanctions and 22% of the 500,000 that
came cite low income as the main trigger for the crisis.
David McAuley, chief executive of the
Trussell Trust, said: “Substantial numbers are needing help because of problems
with the social security system but what's new is that we're also seeing a
marked rise in numbers of people coming to us with 'low income' as the primary
cause of their crisis.
“Incomes for the poorest have not
been increasing in line with inflation and many, whether in low paid work or on
welfare, are not yet seeing the benefits of economic recovery. Instead, they
are living on a financial knife edge where one small change in circumstances or
a ‘life shock’ can force them into a crisis where they cannot afford to eat.”
A report compiled by the All Party Parliamentary
Group on Hunger and Food Poverty has credited the foodbanks for staging “a
social Dunkirk.”
The report, Feeding Britain, makes recommendations
concerning changes to the benefits system, to stop delays and the
implementation of the living wage to counter low pay. However, it is the third
recommendation to create a new generation of “super” food banks that is most
controversial. The new foodbanks would combine food aid with welfare advice and
advocacy. This network of foodbanks would bring together the existing players
with supermarkets and the state.
The report
suggests the supermarkets could redeploy some of this food and play a much more
hands on role in helping out with the foodbanks.
This suggestion
goes to the heart of the dilemma, a step toward institutionalising foodbanks,
rather than seeing them as a temporary measure to deal with a hunger crisis.
The story of foodbanks in Canada provides a salutary lesson.
Foodbanks were
introduced in Canada in the early 1980s in what was perceived as a tough
economic time.
There are now 700
foodbanks in Canada, providing help to 800,000 people. The number has increased
by nearly 100,000 over the past six years – as the country has come out of
economic recession. There have been an abundance of low income jobs created as
part of the economic recovery – sound familiar?
Writing in the
Guardian, Graham Riches, emeritus professor and former director of the School
of Social Work, University of British Columbia, tells how foodbanks have become
a second tier of the benefits system in Canada. “The sad fact is that in
Canada, with its 30-year track record of increasingly corporatised food
charity, recent national data shows that one in eight households or 3.9 million
individuals (11.6% of the population) are still experiencing food insecurity,”
said Graham, who criticises plans for super foodbanks as only addressing the supply
side of the question, thereby recommending “a vanguard role for the charitable
food industry and food waste in the battle against structurally caused food
poverty.”
The
institutionalisation of food banks leads to the depoliticisation of the issue
of hunger. “This can only lead to the long-term institutionalisation of food
banking and diminish political appetite for progressive reform,” said Graham,
who claims that in Canada, the food charity industry has fostered the
de-politicisation of hunger, so it is now a matter primarily for community and
corporate charity, and not a human rights question demanding the urgent
attention of the state.
“Today, Canadian
public perception of food charity is that it should take care of domestic
hunger. Governments can look the other way,” said Graham, who suggests that a right to food should be entrenched
in domestic law backed by international statute, then the obligation to
deal with hunger would be put fully back under the responsibilities of the
state.
Former Leeds West MP
John Battle, who has been doing some research work on foodbanks in Leeds, warns
that “foodbanks could become institutionalised as an alternative to the welfare
state. “
He believes that the
real issue is low pay, with the rich getting richer and the poor poorer. “This
cannot be allowed to go on, with the poor effectively being left to pick up the
scraps from the rich man’s table,” said Mr Battle who pointed out that the
‘Feeding Britain’ report found many of those using foodbanks were on zero hours
contracts.
He insisted that the
implementation of a living wage and maintaining of the welfare state is the
direction in which things should be heading.
Notably the tone of the government has changed
toward foodbanks, with initial scepticism and even hostility – a potential £22
million from an EU fund was rejected in 2013, that could have gone toward this
work – now seemingly turning to broad support.
The net result
of simply expanding the foodbank network is that Churches and charities can continue
to feel good about helping out the poor in a purely charitable way, whilst the
corporates gain a good helping of positive PR from their growing involvement in
these ventures. In the meantime, the numbers going to foodbanks and living
under the poverty line continues to grow. The issue has to be one of justice,
put very simply, the right to eat and live.
It would be a true irony if a virtuous charitable
endeavour like foodbanks evolved into a back door means to further emasculate
the welfare state and build the low pay economy.
*Read@Donno28 on how foodbanks have become institutionalised http://justicemagazine.org/jmwp/ #catholic #foodbanks
20/2/2015 "In the vanguard of feeding Britain - are foodbanks being used to undermine the welfare state?" - see: www.tribunemagazine.org
*Read
20/2/2015 "In the vanguard of feeding Britain - are foodbanks being used to undermine the welfare state?" - see: www.tribunemagazine.org
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