Poverty and food price inflation

Latest figures show on average, total expenditure on food and drink last year was £42.18 per person per week. Households bought 6.1% less food in 2013 than they did in 2007, while spending 20% more.

Across the board, consumers were often “trading down”, buying cheaper brands to save money. “Food is exerting greater pressure on household budgets since 2007 when food prices started to rise in real terms,” the report states. “Low income households bought less food in 2013 than in 2007”. Beef purchases, which account for half of raw-meat purchases, declined by 15.3% on 2010 sales. While households bought less fruit and vegetables over the same period, they spent more on them – 6.7% more on fresh and processed vegetables and 9.2% more on fresh and processed fruit. The price of butter has risen by 67% over the same period, potatoes by 50%, other vegetables by 26%, fruit by 39% with fresh fruit rising 25%.

Food prices last year were about 12% higher in real terms than in 2007. Since 2007, there has been a 51% increase in the price of beef, a 53% increase in lamb and a 52% increase in pork. While the price of lamb fell slightly in 2013, meat prices overall continued to rise. The price of poultry has risen 28% since 2007, and fish by 41%.

For the lowest 20% by income, 16.5% was spent on food and drink, the largest expense after housing, power and fuel. 

 The chairman of the Trussell Trust, Britain's largest provider of food banks, has said that people would have died if they hadn’t been for the service they provide. “People would have died if we had not been there,” says Chris Mould in an interview withNewsweek. “People say to me, ‘You saved my life’. They are not joking.”

He says "Our government has chosen a series of policies which have squeezed the incomes of the working poor.” Mould added that while some place blame on the poor, it is often the case that people simply cannot afford to eat. "People on very low incomes have very sophisticated financial coping strategies,” he said. “They go to a food bank as a resort after they have tried all sorts of other tactics. Conservative politicians often point the finger at poorer people and say they need to get more intelligent in their budgeting. What I say is, no matter how good you are at budgeting you cannot ever make ‘not enough’ into ‘enough’." Mould continued, "Britain is a very unequal society with a large number of people living in relative poverty. “Marginal changes to their income have had a sometimes catastrophic impact. People say they are stupid to take a payday loan but they’re not if, for example, they are being threatened with eviction by a private landlord. For the sake of £25 they have got themselves in a lot of trouble, and then they need food."

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby had written that he found the results of poverty in Britain more shocking than people starving in Africa, concluding that: “Hunger stalks large parts of our country.”

900,000 Britons are now dependent on charity food banks.