Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make it his policy to monitor the provision and use of food banks.

There are no plans for my Department to monitor the use of food banks. This is because as the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Hunger noted that the reasons why people use food banks can be complex and are frequently overlapping. Their use cannot be attributed to a single cause.