The church-funded report says voluntary groups have been courageously fighting “a social Dunkirk” without the assistance of the government, and calls for urgent action to ensure ministers do more to combat hunger, including joining a new coordinating body and asking supermarkets to do more with surplus unsold products.
The initial Conservative reaction to leaks of the report – which is formally published today – was hostile, with one minister claiming the increased use of food banks was due to greater publicity about their existence.
It is also unlikely that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) will shift its stance on the administration of benefit sanctions, even though the report says they are the single biggest reason for the poor resorting to food banks. DWP sources said it was very clear at the start of a benefit claim what was required of a claimant and there would be consequences for failing to meet that commitment.
On Monday, the Prime Ministers spokesman said Number 10 saw no case for a review of benefit sanctions, but said the government was working hard to improve the promptness of the payment of benefits. He pointed out that 93 % of benefits were now paid on time an increase of 7 percentage points since 2010.
The report said that although some inquiry witnesses blamed “chaotic” parents for children arriving at school hungry, others pointed out that some families could not afford decent food.
Similarly, it noted that while some families lacked basic cookery and food management skills, others were so poor they could not afford to switch on the cooker, or did not have a cooker because the kitchen of their private rented flat contained only a microwave.
The row over the prevalence of food banks and the scale of deep poverty in the UK has simmered for much of the coalition’s time in office, but Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, appears determined to confront the government. He said that despite having seen suffering on a recent trip to Africa, he was more shocked by the plight of a family he met at a food bank in England because it was so unexpected.
He says the report, prepared by an all-party parliamentary inquiry into hunger in Britain, paints a “stark picture: hunger stalks large parts of our country”.
The inquiry was jointly led by the Labour MP Frank Field and the bishop of Truro, the Right Rev Tim Thornton, a strong supporter of food banks. Two Tory MPs, a Conservative peer and a Labour MP also sat on the group. Welby played a central role in the six-month study, funded by his Archbishop of Canterbury’s Charitable Trust, which describes food banks as “the new shock absorbers of society”.
The report says benefit-related problems are the single biggest reason for reference to food banks. “There is a clear moral case to address the shortcomings that exist in our welfare system. Our evidence shows that the current system is cumbersome, complicated and fails to respond effectively to the daily changes in people’s lives. A single error can itself end up being the recruiting sergeant for money lenders,” the report says.
The latest statistics show that since October 2012, 833,628 individuals have received an average of 1.73 benefit sanctions each. From April 2000 to June 2014, a total of 3,063,098 people received an average of 2.04 sanctions each. Almost 60% of sanctioned individuals received only one sanction, but 21.5% received more than two, and 46,000 received 10 or more. A Commons select committee is conducting a fresh inquiry into the sanctions regime.
Original Article
Source: theguardian.com/
Author: Patrick Wintour and Patrick Butler
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