What to do about Food Bank Britain?
Food banks exist in a bizarre sphere - they are not part of the welfare state but are proliferating following recent welfare state reform. The government has repeatedly denied any link between benefit cuts and the rise of food poverty, but they need to accept responsibility for the structural injustices caused by austerity.
UK Politics
By Megan Bente Bishop
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Food insecurity in the United Kingdom is on the rise. Since 2008, the number of individuals relying on food banks across the country has risen from 26,000 to over 900,000. Hunger is not just an issue for developing countries, it is heartbreakingly still prevalent here at home. In all the wealth of today’s society, people are still starving. The Trussell Trust, Britain’s largest food bank charity gave out 1,182,954 three-day emergency food supplies between April 2016 and March 2017. If the welfare state cannot even ensure the most basic food security for its citizens, then something is detrimentally wrong.
Food bank use is not, as some have suggested, rising just because people are believe that they can walk in and get free food. People are driven there by nothing but pure desperation. Before using a food bank, you have to first be referred by a GP, which only occurs in situations of severe economic hardship. People using food banks sometimes are even provided with ‘kettle-packs’ of dried food such as soups, because they do not have the means, or cannot afford to even heat their own meals. It is also possible to counter the claim that food banks are used solely by ‘skivers’, but working individuals and families also rely heavily on food banks. The fact that NHS nurses have also been reported to rely on emergency food supplies is a damning indictment of the times we are living in.
The leading drivers in causing individuals to use food banks are benefit delays and changes, such as the 6-week wait for payments brought in by Universal Credit, the bedroom tax and sanctions, as well as low income. This has been exacerbated by repeated cuts and reforms to disability and jobseekers benefits. A study from Oxford University has shown that for every 1% cut in central government spending on welfare benefits in a local authority, the chances of a food bank opening within two years increased by 1.6-fold. In areas where universal credit has been rolled out, food bank use has increased by 17%. Even with ‘record levels of employment’, food bank use continues to increase. The impact of austerity measures such as benefit cuts and zero-hours contracts is very difficult to overstate.
Despite this, the government is keen to put the blame on the individual failings of food bank claimants, be it addiction, indebtedness, family breakdown or educational failure or say the issue is ‘complex’. Paying no attention to the structural factors which trigger food insecurity means it is unlikely we can a holistic solution. ‘Making work pay’ hasn’t worked. Conservative MPs have also emphasised the role of community in the provision of emergency food supplies. Jacob Rees-Mogg has recently come under fire for his claims that an increase in food bank usage are ‘rather uplifting’ as it shows that the British people are charitable. This has been actively refuted by the food bank community as well as the opposition who all plead for the government to take some responsibility for the increase in food poverty and act accordingly.
This debate shouldn’t be occurring. Food banks shouldn’t need to exist in our modern civilised society, let alone at a scale in which they do now. We can embark on a mission to understand the ‘complexities’ which have caused such widespread hunger in a prosperous country or we can accept that the government needs to make changes. To quote the SNP’s Mhairi Black — “food banks are not part of the welfare state, they are a symbol that the welfare state is failing’. One family using emergency food supplies, is one too many.
