MP wins food insecurity fight
PROPOSAL WILL FIND OUT HOW MANY GO HUNGRY
A NORTH EAST MP appears to have won her battle to ensure the Government finds out how many people don’t have enough to eat.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has announced that it is to start collecting statistics, as part of an annual survey it conducts every year, to try to understand how people across the UK live their lives.
It follows a campaign by South Shields MP Emma Lewell-Buck, who proposed legislation to ensure official statistics are collected to measure “food insecurity”.
This refers to people who either can’t afford to buy sufficient food or are worried about their ability to buy food in the future.
Ms Lewell-Buck argues that knowing about the scale of the problem will be a vital step towards taking action to solve it.
A DWP spokesperson said: “We always ensure we use the best possible evidence base for making policy. Building a better understanding of household food needs will help us to ensure we’re targeting support to those who need it most, so we’ve worked closely with stakeholders to develop tools to help us best collect this information.”
Ms Lewell-Buck first proposed her Food Insecurity Bill in the House of Commons in 2017.
The legislation was never likely to become law, as backbenchers are rarely able to change the law without Government support.
However, MPs sometimes put forward laws in an attempt to draw attention to an issue and encourage the Government to act, and in this case it seems to have worked. She said: “I am thrilled that the Government has finally agreed to implement the asks from my Food Insecurity Bill, and will start measuring UK hunger. “It is a real pity that it has taken this long to be enacted as every single day that has passed has been a day that another person has gone hungry.
“This positive step forward should not be used as an excuse for Government inaction while this important data is being gathered.
“The enacting of my Bill should be seen as a precursor to real action on the devastating levels of hunger we are seeing in all of our communities.”
Food insecurity is defined by the UN as being without reliable access to sufficient affordable and nutritious food. And there are signs that the number of people in this position is increasing.
Figures from charity the Trussell Trust show that three-day emergency food supplies to people in crisis went to 22,981 households between April and September 2018.
Official NHS figures show 164 reception-year schoolchildren across the North East were underweight when they started school last year.
Presenting the Bill to the Commons back in 2017, Ms Lewell-Buck, highlighted the case of a South Shields woman with four children under 10 who found herself without money for electricity, gas or any food for her family – and who couldn’t afford transport to get to a foodbank.