Sunday, December 07, 2014 Nick Clegg has called for a rethink of the way the benefit sanctions regime is administered in the wake of a cross-party report endorsed by the archbishop of Canterbury that suggests the penalties are partly to blame for the growing use of food banks in the UK. The report calls for a new national organisation, Feeding Britain, run jointly by the government and voluntary groups, to oversee food banks and eradicate hunger. It also urges food companies to do more to tackle waste and proposes a rise in the minimum wage. Conservative MPs said the plan smacked of nationalisation, and the business minister Matthew Hancock said the growth in food banks was partly because they were now more widely known about. Clegg said on BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show: “There is some evidence that people who are subject to benefit sanctions end up using food banks for a temporary period of time. I think that while it is, of course, necessary to have sanctions in the benefit system, I think we should introduce a traffic light system so that some of the sanctions are not imposed quite as overnight as they sometimes are. That might help alleviate some of the problem.” The church-funded report by an all-party group of MPs and peers proposes: • A new publicly funded body, Feeding Britain, involving eight cabinet ministers, to work towards a “hunger-free Britain”. • Bigger food banks, called Food Banks Plus, to distribute more free food and advise people how to claim benefits and make ends meet. • A rise in the minimum wage and the provision of free school meals during school holidays for children from poor families. • Action to constrain immediate use of benefit sanctions, including potentially the “yellow card” system endorsed by Clegg. Writing in the Mail on Sunday, the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said the report “delved deep into the issues raised, and the findings paint a stark picture: hunger stalks large parts of our country”. He said the plight of a family who turned to a food bank in Britain had shocked him more than suffering in Africa because, though less serious, it was so unexpected. “They were ashamed to be there. The dad talked miserably. He said they had each been skipping a day’s meals once a week in order to have more for the child, but then they needed new tyres for the car so they could get to work at night, and just could not make ends meet. So they had to come to a food bank. “They were treated with respect, love even, by the volunteers from local churches. But they were hungry, and ashamed to be hungry,” he wrote. The report, due to be published on Monday, will make clear that coalition welfare cuts and changes, including “heavy-handed” use of benefit sanctions against vulnerable claimants, are a key factor in the rapid rise in the numbers of people forced to rely on food banks, a connection the government has always insisted is unproven. The report emphasises that benefit delays are one of a number of complex factors contributing to the rise in hunger. It says ministers – both in the current government and the next one – must also combat cost-of-living pressures by tackling low pay and high credit costs, outlawing “ripoff” phone and energy charges, and extending eligibility for free school meals. It argues that the state alone cannot tackle the problem of food poverty, and proposes that the church and the voluntary sector be given a central role alongside supermarkets and government departments in Feeding Britain. Supermarkets and food manufacturers are urged to ensure that more of the millions of tonnes of edible food they send to landfill each year is diverted to charities that provide food parcels and meals to the poor. The report follows an inquiry lasting several months in which a committee of Labour and Conservative MPs and peers toured the country taking evidence from food bank users, charities and volunteers. Its aim was to identify the extent and causes of food poverty in the UK, and set out ways of mitigating it. The former Home Office minister Damian Green suggested the report’s proposals smacked of nationalisation. He said on Sky’s Murnaghan programme: “I don’t mind the churchmen intervening in political issues as long as they then accept that they are in the political arena. There is then a slight feeling of well, it’s the archbishop of Canterbury, you mustn’t disagree with him. Well actually, I do disagree with him in some respects. “Obviously I take his view seriously and I’ll read the report when it comes out but the thought that the state has got to get involved in this seems to me the wrong road: food banks work quite well. We have a welfare state now but what they’re saying is that the welfare state should take over food banks, should nationalise food banks. All that would mean would be we’re spending a bit more on welfare, so I’m not quite sure what the additional value is.” Hancock said: “One of the reasons [for the increase in food bank use] is because more people know about them. And the amount of people who work in food banks and give up their time, I applaud – I think that’s fantastic. But the central question here is how do you tackle these deep-ingrained problems of poverty, and the single best way through that is undoubtedly work. “I’m a huge supporter of the food bank movement and I’m a huge supporter of food banks in my constituency and they have a role to play. But the truth is that poverty is coming down, partly because the number of people in jobs is going up and unemployment is falling at record rates.”
Posted on: Sun, 07 Dec 2014 16:28:47 +0000