Charity calls for official inquiry as food bank use triples in a year

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/oct/16/charity-inquiry-food-bank-use-triples

Version 0 of 1.

Britain's largest food bank network has called on the prime minister, David Cameron, to launch an official inquiry into the causes of food poverty after it emerged that food bank use has tripled year-on-year.

The Trussell trust charity said 355,000 people received food parcels from its food banks between April and September - more than the entire number given out during the whole of last year.

It says the increase is driven largely by hardship caused by benefit delays, welfare reform and low pay – and that the problem of hunger was getting worse. Chris Mould, executive chairman of the trust, said: "The level of food poverty in the UK is not acceptable. It's scandalous and it is causing deep distress to thousands of people. The time has come for an official and in-depth inquiry into the causes of food poverty and the consequent rise in the usage of foodbanks."

The call for an inquiry was backed by international aid charity Oxfam, which said that the rise in food bank use revealed worrying gaps in Britain's social safety net. Oxfam's chief executive, Mark Goldring, said: "This escalation in people using food banks shows we are now facing the shocking reality of destitution, hardship and hunger on a large scale in the UK."

Oxfam has started to invest donor money into Trusell Trust food banks to enable them to hire staff to run their food distribution warehouses and to offer welfare advice in food banks.

The Trussell figures show that one in five food parcel receipients – 65,177 people – were referred to its foodbanks as a result of changes to their benefits in the first half of this year, compared with 14,897 (14%) during the same period last year. Delays in the payment of benefits resulted in 117,442 people (35%) being referred between April and the end of September, compared with 35,597 (33%) in the same period in 2012-13.

The trust said its 400 foodbanks were reporting increased referrals as a result of the bedroom tax, sanctioning (when claimants have their payments stopped for up to six months for infrigements of beneift conditions) and confusion caused by the devolution of social fund crisis loans to local councils in April.

The trust said that while there were now double the amount of foodbanks open this year, this did not account for the rise in demand.

But a spokesperson for the Department for Work and Pensions said it had taken action to help families with the cost of living, and that there was "no robust evidence that welfare reforms are linked to increased use of food banks".

Mould warned that rising living costs and stagnant wages were pushing more people onto a knife-edge, where even a relatively small change in financial circumstances could tip them into poverty. Rising energy prices were likely to result in more people having to choose between heating and eating this winter, he said.

"We're talking about mums not eating for days because they've been sanctioned for seemingly illogical reasons or people leaving hospital after a major operation to find that their benefits have been stopped or delayed. It's not right that so many more people are now being referred to foodbanks due to problems with welfare, especially as much of this is preventable."

Labour MP Frank Field, who has set up an all-party parliamentary group on food poverty, said action to tackle underlying reasons why people use food banks was essential "so that we do not absentmindedly walk into an American welfare system with food banks being a permanent and growing part of the scene".

Field wrote to the prime minster in September calling for an inquiry into the causes of hunger and the rise in food bank use.

Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning.