Poverty and Food-banks

Cuts and changes to Britain’s increasingly threadbare social security system are the most common triggers of the acute personal financial crises that drive people to use food banks, according to research. The study finds that in most cases people used food banks because they were tipped into financial crisis by events that were outside their control and difficult or impossible to reverse, such as benefit cuts and delays, bereavement or job loss. Most people said they used food banks as a desperate and shaming last resort.

At least half of all food bank users are referred because they are waiting for benefits to be paid, because they have had benefits stopped for alleged breaches of jobcentre rules or because they have been hit by the bedroom tax or the removal of working tax credits, it finds. The study, commissioned by the Church Of England, the Trussell Trust food bank network, Oxfam and Child Poverty Action Group, calls for urgent changes to the “complicated, remote and at times intimidating” social security system to make it more responsive to the millions who rely on it. It warns the government against reliance on charity food to fix holes in the welfare state.

The Trussell Trust, which runs more than 400 food banks in the UK, found that 913,138 people were given food parcels by its volunteers in 2013-14, almost a threefold increase on the previous year, and likely to be a fraction of the total numbers of people experiencing food insecurity. The report says the current sanctions policy is “causing hardship and hunger”. Almost a third of food bank users interviewed for the study who had experienced problems with the benefits system said they had been “sanctioned” by social security officials and left penniless for weeks on end, while a further third were left unable to put food on the table because of lengthy delays in benefit payments.

Many people who used food banks lived in, or were close to, poverty and were attempting to cope with the “ongoing daily grind of living without sufficient income to make ends meet each month”. Many worked, but in jobs that were low paid and insecure. Often they were also coping with mental and physical ill health and bereavement.

Alison Garnham, the chief executive of Child Poverty Action Group, said: “Food banks have boomed not because they‘re an easy option but because people haven’t got money to eat – often because of problems with claiming and the payment of benefits. “A delay in a benefits decision or a period pending a review can force hunger and humiliation on families, leaving them no option but the food bank. Rather than protecting these families from poverty at the time when they most need help, the system leaves them with almost nothing to live on.”

David McAuley, the chief executive of the Trussell Trust said: “This new evidence brings into sharp focus the uncomfortable reality of what happens when a ‘life shock’ or benefit problem hits those on low incomes: parents go hungry, stress and anxiety increase and the issue can all too quickly escalate into crippling debt, housing problems and illness.” Junior DWP minister Steve Webb had been due to attend the launch, but pulled out on Tuesday night for unspecified reasons. McAuley said: “They do not want to hear the story”.