NO NEED FOR FOOD BANKS ..LEARN TO COOK

Red Wall Tory attacks poor... as price of supermarket grocery basics soars

TORY MP Lee Anderson was last night condemned for his “shameful” and “insulting” remarks about people forced into food poverty.

Mr Anderson, a Red Wall Tory elected in 2019, said: “There’s not this massive use for foodbanks in this country. We have generation after generation who cannot cook properly, they can’t cook a meal from scratch, they can’t budget.”

He invited MPS to go to his local foodbank, in Ashfield, Notts, to see a “brilliant scheme” where people are given lessons in cookery and budgeting.

“We can make a meal for around 30p a day and this is cooking from scratch,” he told MPS in the Commons yesterday.

His comments came as a study found 100 out of 700 basic range supermarket groceries had leapt in price last month.

And a think-tank predicted 250,000 households would “slide into destitution” next year, with the total in extreme poverty reaching one million. Feeding Britain boss Andrew Forsey said: “Charities like ours are increasingly dealing with outright destitution, where people cannot afford the gas and electricity they need to cook from scratch.”

Food campaigner Jack Monroe said: “You can’t cook meals from scratch with nothing. The issue is not ‘skills’, it’s 12 years of Conservative cuts to social support.”

Sumi Rabindrakumar, of The Trussell Trust, which provided more than 19 million foodbank meals to hungry families in the year to March, said: “Cooking from scratch won’t help families keep the lights on or put food on the table if they don’t have enough money.”

TUC boss Frances O’grady said Mr Anderson’s “insulting” comments “show how out of touch Conservatives are”.

Labour Shadow Work and Pensions Minister Karen Buck said: “The idea that the problem is cooking skills and not 12 years of government decisions that are pushing people into extreme poverty is beyond belief.”

Blasting the “shameful remarks”, Lib Dem work and pensions spokeswoman Wendy Chamberlain said: “These

comments are disgraceful.” The National Institute of Economic and Social Research think-tank estimates that 1.5 million households will struggle to pay for food and energy bills amid the deepening cost of living crisis.

It wants a £25 rise in Universal Credit and a one-off £250 payout for the 11.3 million lower-income households.

The Nationalworld study of supermarket basic ranges found 100 price rises, including Asda Smart Price mushy peas, up 16.7%, from 18p to 21p; Sainsbury’s Stamford Street lasagne, up 25%, from £1 to £1.25; Tesco’s Eastman’s chicken pasta up 30.3%, from 99p to £1.29%, and Grower’s Harvest apple juice up 23.9%, from £1.09 to £1.35.

A report commissioned by the Marie Curie charity found more than 90,000 people a year die in poverty in the UK. ben.glaze@mirror.co.uk

@benglaze

IN BAD TASTE Lee Anderson at a budget cooking event in his local constituency last year VOICE OF THE MIRROR: P10