Food banks were in the news earlier this week, after Work and Pensions minister Lord Freud claimed that the recent hike in the number of families resorting to food handouts was not necessarily linked to growing poverty.
Mumsnet blogger Jack Monroe - whose blog A Girl Called Jack charts her family's life on the breadline and who recently gave evidence to parliament on poverty and hunger - says the government is shirking its responsibilities.
"Half a million people are reportedly reliant on the distribution of emergency food from food banks - but the Government seems intent on blaming feckless parenting and a 'scrounger mentality' for the rise of food poverty in Britain.
First, Lord Freud commented in the House of Lords that there was no link between the recent welfare cuts and the rise in demand for food banks.
Despite the evidence from the Trussell Trust that food bank use has soared 170% in the past year - with many referrals for help coming directly from the Department for Work and Pensions - Lord Freud insists that people don't really need the help.
In a gross slur against desperate families, he claimed that people were turning up just because there was 'free food', and not out of necessity - which simply isn't true. Surveys show that many people suffering from food insecurity wouldn't consider turning to a food bank for help: they find the stigma attached to 'asking for food' too humiliating.
And on Tuesday Michael Gove blamed child poverty and hunger on reckless, irresponsible parenting. In doing so, he denies the reality that most people using food banks do so as a result of benefit delays, sanctions, low income and unemployment. Other factors such as illness and domestic abuse certainly play a part - but these are the key causes, cited time and time again by food bank users.
Many parents tell of going hungry themselves in order to feed their children, as biting austerity measures cut deeper and deeper into family incomes, or lack thereof - hardly the picture of 'feckless parenting' painted by the Education Secretary.
I was a food bank user myself for six months, while unemployed, seeking work, and surviving on just £10 a week for food for myself and my son.
He didn't go hungry during that period - but I did, frequently, sobbing in bed at night in a freezing cold flat, suicidal, desperate, and alone - but adamantly clinging on, for the sake of the then two year old boy fast asleep in his bed.
If food banks become a permanent fixture, the responsibility for feeding the poor and vulnerable will have shifted from the shoulders of the Government, to the shoulders of charities and not for profit sector. Although it's admirable that these organisations are coming together to meet a real and desperate need, they should be seen as a temporary sticking plaster - not a license for the Government to shirk its civic duties towards its citizens.
In terms of feckless parenting, it is this Government, and not the casualties of the shrinking welfare state that are shirking their duties - and sending its children, its citizens, to school, to work, and to bed hungry. Gove, Freud et al need once and for all to look child poverty and hunger in its hideous face, and commit to tackling the underpinning root causes, instead of casting around to see who else can be blamed.
The Government ought to be taking steps towards investigating and tackling poverty, rather than tossing the blame around from Labour to the Tories, from those rogue charities handing out free food, to the feckless parents squandering it on God only knows what. It's easy to say 'it's not my fault'. It's more difficult to come up with solutions.
Or is it? Because I came up with fourteen off the top of my head in Parliament last month, and I'm sure there's more if I think hard enough.
Increasing social housing. Paying housing benefit monthly instead of four weekly to align with rent and mortgage payments and assist with cash flow problems. Payment of benefits quickly upon application, especially with the death of the Crisis Loan earlier this year. A commitment to a living wage would mean more families paying tax, less claimed in benefits, and a better living standard for all.
We need to stop just pulling people out of the river.
It's time to go upstream, and find out why they're falling in."
Jack Monroe
Twitter: @MsJackMonroe
Guest posts
Guest blog: Food banks are feeding families - the government needs to face its responsibilities
KateMumsnet · 05/07/2013 11:11
Great post. In my local churches together food bank there is seriously not enough time in the day to sort everyone out or enough food for everyone who needs it :( I think the payments of benefits quickly is a key point - many are going short because of clerical error or simply red tape and the slow grinding of the system. It's also a big problem for disabled and chronically ill people who cannot get ESA as 'fit to work' yet cannot get JSA as 'not fit for work' 
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Prof it breaks my heart that it affects old people too. I know it's logical and all ages can have poverty and hard times, but 60 year olds should be helped and supported not punished and humiliated 
poor people.
Not all food banks have the '3 times only' rule. I volunteer at an 'independently' organised food bank (run by local churches) and we use our discretion about how much food we give out - some of our clients have been coming to us for two years. .
I know that church run schemes aren't popular on Mumsnet but in my opinion these are the volunteers who are taking the time and energy to organise food banks.
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