Tens of thousands more Britons will be forced to rely on emergency food hand-outs when the Coalition’s controversial welfare reforms come into force next month, the head of the leading food bank charity has warned.
Chris Mould, the chief executive of the Trussell Trust, said that Iain Duncan-Smith’s policymakers “don’t have an adequate understanding” of the reality of poverty in the UK. He said that there was a “very strong link” between real-terms cuts to welfare payments and increasing use of food banks. “When people are on low incomes and just managing to get by, marginal changes that appear to other people to be really quite small, just a few pounds here and there each week, are very significant,” he said. “They can be the difference between getting food on the table or not. People that have been involved in formulating the new welfare policy don’t have an adequate understanding of how precarious the situation for people on low incomes has become.”
The trust manages more than 300 food banks throughout the UK.
Chris Mould, the chief executive of the Trussell Trust, said that Iain Duncan-Smith’s policymakers “don’t have an adequate understanding” of the reality of poverty in the UK. He said that there was a “very strong link” between real-terms cuts to welfare payments and increasing use of food banks. “When people are on low incomes and just managing to get by, marginal changes that appear to other people to be really quite small, just a few pounds here and there each week, are very significant,” he said. “They can be the difference between getting food on the table or not. People that have been involved in formulating the new welfare policy don’t have an adequate understanding of how precarious the situation for people on low incomes has become.”
The trust manages more than 300 food banks throughout the UK.
No comments:
Post a Comment