Stop blaming the poor for poverty

CARLA McCORMACK & RACHEL THOMSON

The Poverty Alliance’s policy team IN SUNDAY night’s television debate ahead of the General Election, a nurse admitted that she had been forced to use a foodbank.

The first area we want to address is the idea that someone on a nurse’s salary would not need to use a food bank.

There were many tweets about why someone on this amount of money would need to go to a food bank and many accused the woman of lying.

However, we already know that nurses are having to use food banks – we’ve seen evidence from the Royal College of Nursing on this.

With the cost of living rising faster than people’s incomes (both for those in and out of work) people are likely to come to pressure points and this is when they find themselves having to rely on food banks.

It is not up to us to make a moral judgment about how people spend their money.

The nurse in question had recently tweeted about a bottle of rose wine.

Many seized upon this as evidence of either lying or fiscal irresponsibility. The problem with this is that it ignores the realities of living in poverty or on a low income.

It is the same argument that we see every time an episode of Benefits Street is on TV and people ask how someone could be in poverty and have a big TV.

It is important to remember that people on low incomes deserve the same treats we all enjoy – who can say they have never bought a treat when the money could have been better spent elsewhere?

By attacking someone online for saying they have had to go to a foodbank, we reduce the likelihood of people speaking out.

We work to support activists to do this on a daily basis but the reaction from many people on Sunday night will no doubt cause some of our activists to think twice about doing so in future.

People relying on foodbanks for food is a sign of societal failure, not individual failure.

So let’s stop blaming people for their poverty and start addressing the structural issues that cause it.