Food Banks

When I was thinking about what to say today I thought well it’s a new year why not go easy on the LibDems after all they have enough problems locally and nationally without me having a go at them again, but then I got a leaflet from Nick telling me that he was solely responsible for the improvement in Sheffield’s roads, yes he’s been out there in his yellow jacket and his bucket of tarmac. Well I thought as he’s so keen to claim credit that I should give the LibDems credit where credit is due.

Since 2010 when the LibDems sold out to the Tories prices have risen faster than wages for 40 out of 41 months, in the same period of time the number of food banks in Sheffield have grown to 16 with another one due to open in Walkley, in the last year it’s estimated that food banks in the City have handed out over 20 thousand food parcels, 20 thousand food parcels in a year, how have we got to this situation? What are we going to do about it?

The current Government are engaged in a process of denial about the issue, despite paying nearly 50 thousand of public money in 2013 for a report on food banks it still hasn’t published it, I suspect because it proves the links between changes in benefits, low wages and the failure of the current Government to implement a living wage or at least increase the minimum wage to a level it should be at.

Instead the Government are engaged on a strategy to attack groups such as the Trussell Trust that supports many food banks in Sheffield. The Government has tried dirty tricks, unilaterally redesigning food bank referral vouchers issued by jobcentres in an attempt to disrupt the collection of data by Trussell on who uses food banks and why. It has contrived an elaborate formulation by which jobcentres do not "refer" claimants to food banks, merely "signpost" them. Food banks, the DWP insists prissily, are really nothing to do with us.

So why the panic? The Trussell trust reveals, powerfully, an inconvenient truth: that welfare cuts (bedroom tax, the benefit cap), welfare reform (sanctions and increased conditionality, and local welfare) and bureaucratic inefficiency (benefit delays) cause hundreds of thousands of people on low-incomes to go hungry and become dependent on emergency food aid. Its data shows low-paid work does not provide automatic release from poverty.
IDS showed why he never won a VC when he was in the Scotch Guards when he failed to face the Labour benches in the Commons when the issue of food banks was debated, instead he bravely pushed forward his deputy Esther Mc Vey all she could offer was that it was all Labours fault. She gave not hit that her party had been in power for three years when nationally the number of food banks grew from 41 thousand to half million. The position of the Government seems to be to win the 2015 election by convincing a large enough number of voters that welfare scroungers are stealing their money, they cannot admit that a real fear of hunger affects thousands of people.