Low pay, growing inequality, social breakdown, and crackdowns on and "reform" of welfare all add up to a growing reality in modern Britain: hunger. Feeding Britain, a new all-party report by MPs and peers, commissioned by the Church of England, argues that the reality of hunger among the country's poor is a new "social Dunkirk", a crisis being met inadequately by an overstretched network of volunteers and food banks, "the new shock absorbers of society".
By any yardstick, it is a shocking portrayal of deprivation in a developed country. Witnesses spoke of fears that private charity food distribution is increasingly akin to Victorian-era Poor Law provision for the “deserving poor”, a substitute for a shrinking welfare state. The report warns that pockets of severe hunger are leading to malnutrition and mental health problems, and describes people scavenging to survive from bins and restaurant waste. It urges reform of the slow payment of benefits and of a punitive benefits system that imposes sanctions on those who break rules deliberately or inadvertently. It says these are the main reasons many of the one million people served by 420 food banks run by the Trussell Trust have to rely on their services.
Among other reforms sought are the establishment of a national Feeding Britain co-ordinating body and a government-funded network of “super food banks”, combining food aid, advice and advocacy, and of a national living wage.
Supermarkets and food retailers are urged to develop systems by which millions of tonnes of discarded food sent to landfill can be diverted to the poor. The report is uncomfortable for the Tories, whose ministers have accused food banks of scaremongering over the extent of the problem, suggesting that demand has increased only because more people have become aware of them.
Work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith is opposed to relaxing the welfare sanctions system and sees no role for the state in food banks. The report's incontrovertibly grim portrayal of modern Britain, however, will take some answering.