Food Poverty: Merseyside

Stephen Twigg Excerpts

Tuesday 16th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered food poverty in Merseyside.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship in Westminster Hall this afternoon, Sir David.

May I start by thanking all the selfless and dedicated food bank volunteers not just in Merseyside but across the country? Over the past two years I have volunteered at a local food bank in my constituency—the North Liverpool food bank network at St John’s church in Tuebrook—and I have seen at first hand both the fantastic work it does and the massive need it seeks to address.

May I also welcome my hon. Friends from across Merseyside who have joined us for this debate? Two of my hon. Friends who are unable to be here today have sent their best wishes. My neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger), has been a long-standing campaigner on this issue, and my other neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden), used his first Prime Minister’s question last year to ask about schools providing free meals during the holidays, which is a subject I will return to later in my speech. Both of them have other duties in the House this afternoon.

Frankly, this is a debate that we should not be having. As a first-world country—one of the wealthiest in the world—it is surely shameful that we have seen the exponential increase in food bank use that there has been. According to the highly respected Trussell Trust, 128,697 people were provided with a three-day emergency food package in 2011. Last year, the comparable figure was over 1.1 million, which is an eightfold increase in a six-year period. In the run-up to Christmas, ITV Granada ran a special report on food poverty, focusing on Morecambe in the north-west. That programme was seen by more than 7 million people, and the issues that it raised so powerfully are exactly the same as the issues that we face in Merseyside.

The Department of Health defines food poverty as

“the inability to afford, or to have access to, food to make up a healthy diet.”

The United Nations found that between 2014 and 2016, just over 4% of the UK population were deemed to be severely food insecure. That is nearly 3 million people in our country, and it suggests that there are about 2 million people suffering from food poverty who, for whatever reason, have not had access to a food bank.

Across the north-west last year, the Trussell Trust network provided 175,000 emergency food packages. That is the largest number in any region in the country. Of course, that does not take into account the independent food banks that are also providing food aid, including the Hope food banks, the Orchard and the Merseyside Youth Association food bank. Last Friday, for example, the Orchard food bank in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) opened at 10 in the morning, handed out 49 bags of food in the space of 25 minutes and had to close at 11 because it had run out of food packages, such was the demand.

Across Merseyside, the two biggest factors driving people to use food banks are low incomes and changes and delays in the benefits system. In the six months between April and September last year, 27% of people in Liverpool said that the main reason they were being referred to the food bank was a low income. These are people in work who are having to use food banks. In recent years, we have seen an increase in food prices. Last year, for example, there was the highest rate of food price inflation for four years. When that is combined with wage stagnation and increasing job insecurity, it means that many of the most vulnerable families in work are taking home less money. Real wages have barely increased in this country for over a decade, and last year they fell by 0.4%. This brings together what might be described as a “perfect storm”, where the price of food is increasing much quicker than most people’s wages. I urge the Government to focus more on measures to tackle the scourge of low pay in this country.

Nationally, the main reason people are referred to food banks is low incomes for families in work. In Liverpool, although that is the case for a significant number, the primary reason is changes and delays in the benefits system. Some 51% of those who used a food bank in Liverpool last year did so because of changes or delays with their benefits. Since 2010, we have seen more than 20 major changes to working-age benefits in this country, and that has affected more than 50,000 households in just the city of Liverpool. Liverpool City Council undertook a cumulative impact assessment of those changes two years ago, and I urge the Minister to work with Liverpool City Council and other local authorities to undertake a current cumulative impact assessment of the impact of benefit changes in communities in not only Merseyside but other parts of the country.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

Just before Christmas I walked into my constituency office and saw Jay Glover, my assistant, on the phone to the Department for Work and Pensions for an extraordinary amount of time, trying to resolve somebody’s benefits problem. That was just before Christmas, and that person had to go to a food bank. Does my hon. Friend agree that such incidents are becoming ever more frequent in all our constituency offices, and so we know that this DWP delay is real?

[Stephen Twigg]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. My experience from my advice surgeries and the constituency caseworkers in my local office is exactly the same, as I am sure is that of colleagues. The survey evidence that I referred to demonstrates that in Liverpool, half of those who have to use food banks say that it is because of delays and changes with benefits.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on raising this really important subject. In Wallasey we have a very similar result. Well over half the people who have to use the food bank—and it is large numbers now—report to the Trussell Trust that they are doing so because of either benefit sanctions or delays to their benefits. Does he agree that this is a Government-made problem?

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Twigg]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point, and I will now focus my remarks on the set of challenges arising from that combination she described so accurately of the impact of benefit changes, benefit cuts and benefit delays, and sanctions.

A report by Sheffield Hallam University pointed out how the risks and costs had, in many ways, been passed from central Government to local authorities. From the point of view of Merseyside authorities, this has coincided with a drastic and dramatic cut in central Government funding for those local authorities.

As it has been implemented, universal credit has had an impact on debt and therefore on food poverty. In an article published this weekend, my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) suggested a number of changes the Government could make to universal credit that would have a real impact on communities such as those across Merseyside. Two of her suggestions are relevant to today’s debate. One is to urge the Government to follow Labour’s example and commit to passporting every family on universal credit to free school meals in order to avoid cliff edges when household earnings increase. Secondly, she suggested that claimants should be able to choose to receive their universal credit payments fortnightly to minimise the risk of households running up debts while they wait for payments. I urge the Minister to consider those two very positive suggestions from my hon. Friend.

A former Minister at the Department for Work and Pensions wrote in a letter to Liverpool City Council:

“The suggestion that benefit delays are responsible for an increase in foodbank usage is unfounded”.

That is completely at odds with what I hear when I volunteer at my local food bank and with all the information that I have received from a range of local organisations in preparing for today’s debate. I ask the new Minister, whom I welcome to his position, to take a different view from that of his predecessor and instead to support the view of the Trussell Trust that changes to benefits are forcing people to turn to food banks. If he is not prepared to take that position, I would like him to give the House his alternative explanation for the eightfold increase in the number of people using food banks.

Food poverty is a growing public health concern. A lack of access to the nutritious food needed for a balanced diet increases the burden on the national health service. Liverpool has seen a significant rise in the number of fast food outlets coincide with a rise in food poverty. The city of Liverpool has the 34th highest outlet density of 325 local authorities, and the areas with the highest density tend to be in the most deprived parts of the city. One of the strongest measures of a healthy diet is how often people manage to eat five portions of fruit and veg a day. Liverpool has the 29th lowest proportion of the population managing that; Manchester is the only core city with a proportion that is lower still.

Liverpool City Council has tried to address the challenge by teaming up with a brilliant local social enterprise, Can Cook. Using donations, Can Cook has produced food packages containing predominantly fresh food, feeding local people with nutritious food for five days. I take this opportunity to praise the work of Can Cook in its efforts to make healthy food parcels available to people, and to thank the Liverpool Echo, which teamed up with Can Cook for a significant fundraising campaign in 2016. That is just one example of the ways people across Liverpool, including Liverpool City Council, are striving to help the poorest in our city.

The Liverpool Citizens Support Scheme was set up by the city council to help the most vulnerable in Liverpool who are facing short-term crises to meet their needs for food and other essential items. The average award is £91, and Liverpool City Council made over 10,000 awards, of which 8,000 were for families in urgent need. The council is also helping with discretionary housing payments for people who need extra help with their rent. The original budget for that scheme was £2.7 million, but the sheer demand has meant that the council has found another £600,000 for it. That highlights a number of things, including the impact of the bedroom tax on communities across Liverpool.

The Mayor of Liverpool, Joe Anderson, has established the Mayoral Hardship Fund, a special £2 million fund over three years, set up specifically for the council to be able to respond to the exceptional and growing pressures on Liverpool residents who are on a low income. Those schemes have become a life support system for some of the most vulnerable families in the city, who are facing years of austerity, wage stagnation and benefit changes. I ask the Minister to join me in praising the city council for doing that, to tell us what the Government will do to support Liverpool’s efforts to protect the most vulnerable and to say whether they will encourage other local authorities in other parts of the country to establish similar schemes.

I will finish by talking about one of the many brilliant community organisations in my constituency, which works with some of the poorest and most vulnerable. The organisation is called Croxteth Gems, and before Christmas I was pleased to team up with it to help with its “12 Days of Christmas” campaign. Jean Hannah, who runs the organisation, tells the story of a family she visited in Croxteth a couple of years ago, who were on hard times. Jean arrived at their home and was shocked to see that, rather than an actual Christmas tree, the family simply had a picture of a Christmas tree. They could not afford a tree or Christmas decorations. The “12 Days of Christmas” campaign sought to ensure that some of the poorest families in Croxteth were nevertheless able to enjoy their Christmas. Originally, the aim was to help 100 families, but the strength of the local community response was such that Jean and her team were able to deliver food, clothes, Christmas trees, decorations and presents to 136 families, benefiting over 350 children.

Croxteth Gems does work like that all year round. It was originally set up to provide play and youth services, but because of the reality of food poverty, it has increasingly had to serve food to hungry children. One thing it does during school holidays is to provide play to children in the local area, and provide meals as part of that. It is now helping to support a local school to provide a breakfast club for over 70 children throughout the school year. The additional work it does, beyond its core mission, has only been made possible by generous donations from the local community.

I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) has led some excellent cross-party work urging that there should be free school meals for children during the school holidays. That measure would make a difference to some of the poorest and most vulnerable families in Merseyside and, indeed, in other parts of the country. I know there is a private Member’s Bill on the subject on Friday’s Order Paper; I urge the Minister and the Government to give serious consideration to supporting that proposal to help some of the poorest and most vulnerable children be fed throughout the school holidays.

There are organisations up and down the country like the ones I have referred to—Croxteth Gems and the North Liverpool food bank—stepping in where the state has failed. I also particularly thank Fans Supporting Foodbanks, which has brought together Everton Supporters Trust and Spirit of Shankly—Liverpool’s supporters—to mobilise football fans in Liverpool in support of our local food banks.

I want to see an end to food poverty not just in Merseyside, but across the whole of the United Kingdom. For that to happen, it will require a fundamental change in Government policy on benefits, wages and the funding of local authorities. I am pleased to have had the opportunity today to highlight the scale of the challenge we face and to pay tribute to the amazing response of local communities across Liverpool. Local people have risen to the challenge of addressing food poverty. I urge the Minister and the Government to change course so that together we can finally defeat food poverty once and for all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alok Sharma]

I did not say that it is not a problem, and of course I want to ensure that everyone, both in Liverpool and across the country, gets the help they need.

Adults in workless families are four times more likely to be in poverty than those in working families, and children who live in workless households are five times more likely to be in poverty than those in a house where all adults work. We want to see more people in work, and we want to support more people into work. In recent years, the Government have undertaken the most ambitious reform to the welfare system in decades to ensure that work always pays. This reform is already delivering real and lasting change to the lives of many of the most disadvantaged people in our society. Nationally, there are almost 1 million fewer workless households than in 2010. Indeed, workless households are now at an all-time low. In the north-west, the region that many Opposition Members represent, there are around 87,000 fewer workless households than there were seven years ago.

[Stephen Twigg]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. In a sense, he is answering the earlier question, because if the numbers of workless households are going down, yet food bank usage is going up, surely we have a real challenge about families where people are in work still having to access food banks, because of low pay and insecure work.

[Alok Sharma]

I know that this a very emotive subject and I understand that hon. Members are keen to get answers. I will seek to provide some of those if I may make progress. The latest data shows that the employment rate in the Liverpool city region has seen a 4.1 percentage point increase since 2010 and the comparable national figure shows an increase of 4.2 percentage points.

We have had a discussion about food poverty and more generally about poverty rates. The case is, whichever way you look at poverty rates—relative or absolute; before or after housing costs—none are higher than in 2010. The proportion of people in absolute poverty is at a record low. Across the country, there are 600,000 fewer people in absolute poverty compared with 2010, and in the north-west there are 100,000 fewer people in absolute poverty compared with the three years up to 2010.

Of course, we want to do everything that we can to make sure that those numbers go down further. Let me explain what we are doing in welfare reform to make that happen.

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[Alok Sharma]

I have to disagree with the hon. Lady’s comment from a sedentary position. It does, because for every extra hour people work, they get to keep more of the money they earn.

Universal credit claimants are able to find work faster and stay in work for longer than those under the system it replaces. Indeed, 86% of people under universal credit are actively looking to increase the hours that they work, compared with only 38% on jobseeker’s allowance.

We have to ensure that help is provided as people seek to find employment. The Government are providing a wide range of support targeted to each individual’s personal circumstances. Under universal credit, people have access to more tools than ever before to underpin their work search and help with budgeting, digital skills, preparing CVs and getting ready for job interviews.

[Stephen Twigg]

The Minister is obviously ranging somewhat more widely on universal credit. Will he respond to the very specific question that the shadow Minister and I raised about the cliff edge in the rules in universal credit that relate to free school meals? Will he and the Government look again at a very significant negative side of the reform?

[Alok Sharma]

The hon. Gentleman knows that free school meals are universal for all children from reception to year 2, and currently all children who are the offspring of universal credit claimants are entitled to free school meals. There has been a consultation, which has closed, and the Department for Education will respond.

I am undertaking a programme of visits to jobcentres across the country. It is important for me as the Employment Minister to talk not only to the people who work in those jobcentres, but to those people who are there as customers. Last week, I visited the jobcentre in my local area, Reading, twice, first to talk to the people who run it; and secondly to talk to individual claimants. I sat in on one of the interviews and asked one of these ladies what she made of universal credit. She said:

“Universal credit is amazingly simple.”

Those are not my words, but the words of an individual who went—[Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Twigg]

The Minister just said that he does not wish to be complacent, but with all respect to him, I must say that that was a very complacent response to the debate. In particular, he did not address the fundamental question at the heart of the debate, which I posed at the beginning of my speech and other colleagues raised, about the eightfold increase in the number of people using food banks in 2017 compared with 2011.

The Minister said that the all-party group on hunger has said that the causes of increased use of food banks are complex. Of course they are complex, but several of us cited the research, which he did not dispute, suggesting that the major two reasons are low pay and insecure work on one hand, and benefit changes and delays in the benefit system on the other. I hope the Government will reflect on the points raised by Members from across Merseyside. There is anger and passion on the Opposition side of the House. We are reflecting the anger and passion in our own constituencies about the sense of injustice and inequality, and the poverty that people face.

The Minister addressed some of the specific points raised by several Opposition Members. I note in particular what he said about free school meals. I and others will pursue that with the Department for Education, because the threat of that cliff edge will be damaging to communities. Clearly, as a number of my hon. Friends have said during this debate, this is a major issue that is not going to change.

There is a fear that, as universal credit is fully extended across Merseyside, our communities will face greater levels of debt and greater usage of food banks. The bedroom tax, an issue to which I referred briefly but which featured less in this debate than it often does, has undoubtedly contributed to insecurity and debt for many of the communities that we seek to represent.

I am pleased to have had the opportunity to air these important issues. I hope the Minister and the Government will go away and reflect on what we have said, but I return to the fundamental point: the evidence shows us that the eightfold increase in the use of food banks has to do with low pay, job insecurity and poor-quality work, but also benefit delays and changes. The Government need to look again at those issues.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered food poverty in Merseyside.