Charity foodbanks help 300,000 people to eat

Trussell Trust opens three new outlets a week

MORE than 300,000 people across the UK will have been fed by charity foodbanks by the end of the financial year. People in low-paid work make up more than half of those who have turned to the service to eat. The Trussell Trust, which operates a network of foodbanks, said it was opening three new outlets a week to cope with demand. Since April last year the trust has had to provide emergency food parcels for 264,000 people, more than twice the number fed in 2011/12.

A CHARITY that provides a network of food banks across the UK is set to have fed more than 300,000 people by the end of the financial year, with people in low-paid work making up 51% of those too poor to eat, it has been revealed.

The Trussell Trust is opening three new food banks a week, and has expanded its network in Scotland from three to 23 over the past 18 months.

It had expected to feed 250,000 individuals nationwide in 2012/13, but has already had to provide emergency food parcels for 264,000, more than twice the number fed through food banks in 2011/12.

The figures were revealed by Ewan Gurr, the trust’s Scottish development officer who said the Christian charity was expecting demand rise further due to welfare reforms and the rising cost of living.

“Often mum and dad will go without food so the children can be fed,” said Mr Gurr from the Trussell Trust.

He recently addressed charities and councillors in East Dunbartonshire, where a group is aiming to launch a food bank based in Kirkintilloch.

He said: “Hunger is not just a third-world problem. A lot of people don’t meet the criteria for emergency payments from social services, but can’t afford to eat. Things are going to get messy, and every service will need to pull together.”

The trust’s franchised model sees local community groups, churches or voluntary organisations co-ordinating to collect food, frequently soliciting it from shoppers at local supermarkets, by handing out lists of desired foods to enable the provision of emergency three or fiveday packages of nutritionally balanced food to those in need.

Mr Gurr said: “It is a sustainable model but we have

Hunger is not just a third world problem. A lot of people don’t meet criteria for emergency payments but can’t afford to eat

already overshot the 250,000 we expected to have fed by April 2013. We have fed 264,000 men, women and children in 11 months. That is a scary, scary statistic and more than double the number we fed in 2011/12.”

Mr Gurr also said he was lobbying critics to stop depicting food banks in sensational terms, such as describing them as an indictment on society.

Many politicians and commentators have been critical of their rapid development, including Labour leader Ed Miliband as well as politicians such as Glenrothes MP Lindsay Roy and Inverclyde MP Iain Mckenzie.

“I’m speaking to a lot of MPs to discourage the use of terms like disgraceful, or scandalous to describe food banks,” Mr Gurr said. “It exacerbates the stigma people feel at using food banks. It is an example of communities pulling together as they always have done. Before the inception of the welfare state, faith groups were the primary source of emergency food provision.

“This is a human and grassroots response to need. We could wait for the governments at Westminster or Holyrood to respond, but people might starve and die in the intervening period, just so we can make a point,” he added.

Catherine Bradley, manager of East Dunbartonshire Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB), said volunteers were frustrated at their inability to help the increasing number of people coming to them for assistance.

Traditionally the CAB had a policy of not allowing people to leave without a solution to their problem or directing them to another source of support, she said, adding: “We have people coming in and saying, ‘I have nothing’.

“We have never had that in East Dunbartonshire. People are coming in who have had their benefits reduced and other issues and we are seeing that on a weekly basis now.”

The move to encourage the setting up of a food bank is being supported by East Dunbartonshire Voluntary Action and Kirkintilloch Baptist Church.

THERE are two kinds of banks that characterise the economic troubles this country is facing. The first kind is the banks that helped precipitate the crisis in the first place with their reckless lending and disastrous investments. The second is the banks that symbolise the consequences of the crisis: the food banks. Such food banks used to be the reserve of the very poorest in society, but now they are a refuge for an increasing number of people who have never relied on charity before. Hundreds of thousands of people would not be able to feed their families without them.

Now we learn this crisis of modern poverty is deepening. The Trussell Trust, a charity that provides food banks across the UK, says it is opening new food banks at the rate of three a week. In 2012/13, it helped 264,000 people – which was more than double the number fed through food banks in 2011/2012. In the last 18 months alone, the Trust has expanded its network of food banks in Scotland from three to 23.

Yet what is the Coalition Government’s answer to this crisis? The most punitive, draconian reforms the welfare system has seen. The food banks prove there is a huge hole in the social security net in Scotland yet the Government’s only response is further to weaken the safety net with benefit cuts, on a landscape of rising living costs, that will drive more and more people to rely on food and drink provided by charities.

And it is not only those who are relying on benefits who have turned to the food banks. The Trussell Trust says most of those who turn to them for help are in work, but work that is so low-paid that they cannot afford the basics for their families. This is a consequence of a fatal mix of reforms, the undermining of working tax credit and a downward drive on pay and working hours that has made working poverty a reality in modern Britain.

Despite this, the narrative of the Government continues to be unsympathetic – it is one of scroungers and the undeserving poor; it insists there is a need to squeeze the system further to force the poor off benefits and discourage the so-called welfare lifestyle. Food banks prove the opposite; they demonstrate that there is a genuine need, that some people have no alternative. People do not go to food banks because they are too lazy to work; they go there because they are desperate, because they have no choice, and because the system has failed.