Under agenda item 2, we will take evidence on food banks and possible links with the United Kingdom Government’s welfare reforms. For this round-table session, I welcome Dave Kilgour, city strategist, Aberdeen City Council; Mark Ballard, head of policy, Barnardo’s Scotland; and Dr John Ip, general practitioner, British Medical Association. Given my tonsillitis, Dr Ip, you are particularly welcome. [Laughter.] I also welcome Keith Dryburgh, policy manager, Citizens Advice Scotland; Jamie Livingstone, head of Oxfam Scotland; Barbara Kendall, divisional director for community services, west Scotland division, the Salvation Army; and Kay McIntosh, tackling poverty team manager, South Lanarkshire Council.
I should point out that the round-table format not only allows members to ask questions directly of those who have kindly given their time to come along, but encourages interaction between everyone at the table. It has worked very well for us in the past, and I hope that it will work well today.
I will kick things off with a general question. The welfare reform minister, Lord Freud, has said that the increase in food bank use and demand predates his welfare reforms and that there is no evidence of a causal link between that rise and the reforms. However, Dr Filip Sosenko of Heriot-Watt University told the committee that welfare reform was
“a major factor fuelling demand for food aid”—[Official Report, Welfare Reform Committee, 4 March 2014; c 1308.]
and that the evidence for that is “robust and reliable”.
In your experience, have the UK Government’s welfare reforms, particularly the increasing use of sanctions, been a contributing factor in the rise in demand for emergency food aid?
The demand that is being experienced in citizens advice bureaux has been rising over the past two or three years and, as such, predates the Welfare Reform Act 2012. However, a number of the Government’s changes such as the changes to tax credits and the tightening of the sanctions regime, which did not need to be done through the 2012 act, were introduced earlier and, along with reassessments for employment and support allowance, have been the biggest factors in the increase in demand for food banks. Latterly, the introduction of the bedroom tax and other measures in the 2012 act has increased demand further, but a range of things that were introduced before the Welfare Reform Act 2012 has contributed to the increase.
In our experience, sanctions are a major factor in the referrals and signposting that citizens advice bureaux have had to make. In the period from January to March, we have had to signpost 1,300 clients—or about one in 50—to food banks. According to a recent survey of front-line advisers, 90 per cent agreed that sanctions had led directly to an increase in demand for food parcels. In short, the national evidence and our on-the-ground coalface evidence point towards welfare reform as the cause of the increase in demand.
GPs have made it clear that the sanctions that patients are getting as they journey through the Department for Work and Pensions process are impacting on their mental and financial health. I have received many reports from GPs whose patients have told them stories about how rigid and unfriendly the system is. Patients have difficulty in finding their way through it and understanding the rules; the forms can be very complex; and the rules for the work-related activity group of ESA claimants can be extremely stringent. If people inadvertently do not follow those rules completely, their benefits are sanctioned.
Patients often come to their GP very stressed—indeed, in extreme distress—and looking for support from the national health service, and that is having a significant impact on GP workload at a time when that workload is under extreme pressure. Members will know about the ageing population and the increasing complexity of healthcare needs, but my experience—and certainly the experience of my colleagues—is that welfare reform and how it is being carried out are having a significant impact on GP services.
Are your colleagues reporting that their patients are increasingly using food banks?
Yes. As we all know, food banks are increasing their services, and we feel that that is demand led rather than supply led. One line of thought is that if food banks increase their supply more people will use them, but what we are seeing—indeed, as we have seen before with the expansion of food bank services—is that many patients, especially those in the most vulnerable groups in our society and those who live in very poor areas, are in severe financial distress, and the welfare changes are a significant contributor to that.
I should have said earlier that anyone who wants to contribute should indicate as much to me. I call Mark Ballard.
Thank you for inviting Barnardo’s Scotland to this morning’s event.
In research that Barnardo’s recently carried out across the UK on the changing pattern of food bank use, we found that around 90 per cent of the Barnardo’s services we talked to now use food banks and that almost all the services had seen an increase in demand for food banks. In addition, nearly half of Barnardo’s services directly supply food and other essentials to the families they work with who are in emergency situations. Moreover, there has been much greater use of the small grants scheme that we have always run.
As for the question of where that demand is coming from, it is worth recognising that a range of factors is contributing to the situation. Keith Dryburgh and Dr Ip have already mentioned benefit sanctions and delays in benefit payments, and we should also highlight the impact of, for example, the bedroom tax, which is leading families to use money that would have gone on food to pay for the element of their housing costs that is no longer covered by their benefits.
We should acknowledge the impact of the rising cost of food and other essentials. Our research indicates that, between 2007 and 2012, food prices rose between 19 and 47 per cent. We are talking about the cost of essential goods, and for many of the families with whom we work that increase has also been a factor in making food unaffordable.
Of course, the issue goes wider than food banks. I refer the committee to Institute for Fiscal Studies research that indicates that increasing numbers of single-parent households and households with young children are switching from fresh fruit and vegetables to cheaper processed food, which will also have a long-term impact on diet and health.
The pretty unequivocal evidence from the front line is that demand is increasing but that a range of factors is contributing to that.
Oxfam is best known for its work around the world, but for the past 20 years or so we have been working in the UK and it is fair to say that, alongside the worldwide rise in hunger, there has been a big increase in the number of people in developed countries needing food support.
Reading the submissions for today’s meeting, I was struck by the broad agreement about the causes of surges in food bank use. I do not think that it is credible to say that there is no link between welfare changes and food bank use.
Oxfam does not do direct delivery. We work with partners, and we are partnered with the Trussell Trust. I know that the Trussell Trust has given evidence to the committee previously, but since then it has released figures that show that 77,000 Scots used its services last year and the top reason that was given was welfare delays. Low income came into it, but the third reason was welfare changes, so two of the top three reasons were welfare changes.
Alongside that, we work with West Dunbartonshire Community Foodshare, which is an independent food bank service that operates three outlets across the area. It tells a remarkably similar story, in that statistics for last year show 2,500 service users coming through its doors. We have to pause and give credit to the volunteers who man those services.
We can clearly say that the value of, and the protection that is afforded by, the welfare state has been degraded in recent years. People are faced with the double whammy of their cash benefits losing real-terms value and shifts in welfare entitlement. Some of that has been mitigated by measures that have been taken in Scotland, but I do not think that we can say that it has all been mitigated.
Yes, there is a link between welfare reform and the surge in the use of food banks.
Jamie Livingstone mentioned that 77,000 Scots have used the Trussell Trust in the last financial year. Obviously, the Trussell Trust does not operate every food bank in Scotland. Do you have any information about the wider figure? I assume that it would be much higher.
We do not have that figure. There are a lot of independent food banks and food sharing services across the country. The recent report by the Scottish Parliament information centre shows that the trends that we are seeing in the Trussell Trust’s figures are pretty much replicated in other food bank services across the country. I do not have the numbers, but the reasons that people give to the Trussell Trust for turning up at food banks are pretty much replicated elsewhere.
Aberdeen City Council supports the food bank partnership, which brings together a number of organisations that have been doing food bank work for many years, such as Community Food Initiatives North East and Instant Neighbour, as well as community-based organisations and community projects. We support them through direct funding from the council’s fairer Aberdeen fund.
The figure that those organisations gave for last year was 7,800 beneficiaries; that is obviously individuals and families. Essentially, there is a link between welfare reform and the growth in food bank use. The whole approach needs to take on board how we work in partnership in supplying food and in providing the range of services that are needed to address other aspects of welfare reform.
Like other members, I have visited food banks in my area to get a grasp of what is happening out there. One of the things that has been bothering me of late is the number of reports of folk going to food banks but being unable to take certain foods because they no longer have cooking facilities. Often they have access only to a kettle and boiling water, or something like that. That restricts the food that they can take and cuts out almost all fresh vegetables, although not necessarily fresh fruit. Are the witnesses hearing about that in the work that they do? Perhaps Dr Ip could indicate how damaging it can be to folks’ health, particularly young people’s health, if they are not being fed properly.
I note that Ken Macintosh wants to come in, but I shall allow answers to that point first.
10:15
We all know that fresh fruit and vegetables and freshly cooked food rather than processed food are much more beneficial to people’s overall health, so that concerns me if people are relying on food banks. In the short term, it is probably all right, but in the longer term, especially for families with younger children, if those children are not getting their supply of fresh fruit and vegetables, fresh meat and food that is freshly cooked rather than processed, that will have a longer-term impact on those young people’s health.
Food is not just about stuffing bellies. Food is often part of getting together with the family, so there is a social interaction with eating. Unfortunately, especially in families that are suffering financial stress, that pastoral sense in which food and meals sit together with wellbeing has been damaged. Young people growing up in such families do not see food as something to do with a social situation that gives people strength and support, and in the longer-term that could be damaging.
I look at the issue from the perspective of a number of agencies in South Lanarkshire. The food poverty sub-group of our financial inclusion network helped to prepare our evidence statement, and it is clear that that group is seeing an increasing number of folk who are presenting at food banks and at other agencies, and are unable to use a normal food parcel because they cannot pay their electricity bills and so cannot use their cookers. A lot of the food banks and other agencies are now looking into other mechanisms for supporting individuals, such as adding on community cafes and taking other approaches that might help.
As Dave Kilgour said, we need to think, from a council and community planning perspective, about how to get wider support to such families. There is a range of intensive family support projects to which we can refer people, and we need to make the link between people presenting for assistance and going beyond simply giving out crisis food aid.
I agree strongly with the points made by Dr Ip and by Kay McIntosh. Recently I spoke to a family support service manager in the west of Scotland, who said that one of the issues is that service users cannot afford the public transport to come to the food bank, so Barnardo’s staff have to take the food or vouchers to them. There are problems about the cost of transport, the cost of electricity and a whole basket of rising prices at a time when wage income is being depressed and benefits income is facing sanctions and the bedroom tax. A situation in which people cannot even afford the bus fare to get to the food bank is also a major challenge in making a food bank service work.
People may be experiencing a crisis in their whole life, not just because they cannot afford food. That comes at the end of a big set of coping mechanisms. They might be skipping meals or they might be living without electricity, and by the time that they get to a bureau or a food bank they are often desperate and in crisis. We see cases in which people cannot afford to go and get food or to heat the food, and I know that some food banks have specific food parcels for people who cannot afford to cook.
Because there is a wide range of crisis issues, there has to be a wide range of responses to the situation. It cannot just be a short-term response. Everyone who is identified as being in a crisis situation must be able to access every service that would benefit them, so they should go to one place and get access to all the services.
We are trying to build our clients’ resilience. Stirling Citizens Advice Bureau developed a crisis guide. The CAB has a poster in the window so that anyone who is in a crisis can see the things that they can do, the places that they can access at night and so on. People can take away the guide, which shows everywhere in Stirling that they can go to for help. We are funding 23 bureaux, I think, to do the same. We are trying to empower people, and to ensure that they know about the support that is out there.
Addressing the key causes is much more important, but building people’s resilience to crisis situations is very important, too.
I will take Barbara Kendall and Kevin Stewart, then Ken Macintosh, who has been waiting very patiently.
The Salvation Army does not operate food banks per se, but we are at the coalface of providing emergency food parcels for folks who present at our church centres and other centres.
On the initial point about whether there is a link between welfare reform and the use of food banks, we have very raw data. We recognise that, over the years in which we have provided emergency food parcels, there has been a major increase in the number of people who use the service—folks in the community who are vulnerable and particularly deprived—and we have looked at ways to capture that data.
We have not been doing that for very long, but the data that we have suggests that the key reasons why people present for emergency supplies of food are welfare reform or benefit related—changes or delays to benefits. The new paperwork that we are working with gives our volunteers the opportunity to record whether particular sanctions have caused a difficulty that has resulted in people coming for food.
The Salvation Army offers quite a holistic approach. People have talked about folks being unable to heat food, et cetera. A number of our centres provide hot meals in community cafes and situations like that, so that people have another option in addition to receiving an emergency food parcel and have an opportunity to sit down and have social interaction, so folks can get to know them a bit better and perhaps signpost them to other services and agencies that might be able to help with other needs that contribute to the fact that they are in food poverty.
From our perspective, there has been an increase, and from the brief snapshot of evidence that we have, changes to benefits appear to have contributed to that.
Kevin, is your question on the same area?
Yes, it is, convener.
Food banks now provide other services, too. Just a few weeks ago I visited CFINE—Community Food Initiatives North East—and talked to a woman who works there who has worked in deprived communities for more than 35 years. She says that this is the worst that she has ever seen things.
A shocking thing that I had not really thought about until that day is the help that is now being provided with nappies. Folks cannot afford nappies and, in a lot of cases, cannot use reusable nappies because they are not able to wash them.
Are folks finding that those kinds of services are being bolted on to the food that food banks are providing and, if so, how much of the food banks’ efforts are in those areas now?
Can folk bear that in mind? I am going to bring in Ken Macintosh, because he has been waiting for quite a while.
Thank you, convener. I have a brief follow-up question, but it is on a different issue.
That is okay.
It is on Jamie Livingstone’s point about Oxfam’s international comparisons of the use of food banks. You might not have the statistics today, but the committee would appreciate any information about lessons that we can learn or similar patterns that have emerged in other countries. Our colleague Linda Fabiani was looking at food banks in America as part of her recent trip. It is always informative to know whether our experience here in the UK is unique, or whether it is widespread in developed countries, not just developing countries.
Everybody around the table—except perhaps one person—is conscious that the UK Government needs to respond and to change its welfare reforms, but there are many actions that we could take here in Scotland, too. My question is about the appropriateness of food banks as a response to the difficulties that people have. It is impossible not to be full of admiration and support for those who provide food, which people clearly need, but many observers have said that if people are in need, it would be better to give them money so that they can make their own choices.
I notice that the Salvation Army’s submission points out that many local authorities, which are responsible for administering crisis support provided through the Scottish Government, offer only in-kind assistance. I think that it was Mark Ballard from Barnardo’s who pointed out that the welfare fund and crisis support that is available are not available instantaneously, as food banks are.
Are there lessons that we could learn? Food banks have clearly been a fantastic reaction to the need that exists, but is there a more appropriate way of responding, such as providing cash, which might boost resilience and give people a bit more respect than providing them with food parcels does?
Jamie, do you want to respond to the first point about international comparisons?
Scotland and the UK are certainly not alone in this. Around the world, one in eight people is going hungry. Over the past 20 years, we have seen a dramatic increase in the amount of food aid being distributed in developed countries.
How food poverty is defined and recorded differs dramatically in different contexts. What we could learn from Oxfam’s humanitarian response is that giving cash is a useful way of trying to deal with the issue—Ken Macintosh picked up on that in the second part of his question. If cash is given instead of food, that not only gives people choice and dignity; it also boosts the local economy—people who go for food support will spend any money that they get in their local economy and boost that economy. Given our programme experience, cash, rather than food, would be our preference.
More broadly, this is not a matter of the affordability of welfare. What we spend on welfare now as a percentage of GDP is pretty much the same as it was 20 years ago. We are living in a country where five of the richest families own the same wealth as the poorest 20 per cent of the population—more than 12 million people. This comes down to choices and political will; I do not think that it comes down to whether we can afford to give people—whether they are in or out of work—enough money to live with the dignity to which we are all entitled.
On Ken Macintosh’s point about the Scottish welfare fund and its ability to pay cash, although I know that there is variance across the country, I think that we are sitting at 97 per cent of the fund having been spent, with applications still being processed. We try to turn around applications within a day, as opposed to two days—that is for crisis payments, rather than community care grants. We will pay cash, and when somebody cannot feed themselves, we will certainly pay cash.
I know that there is variance across the country and that we must try to make the systems around the Scottish welfare fund as appropriate as possible to people’s needs. It is also about working out when that route, as opposed to a food bank route, is appropriate. It comes back to our working as community planning partnerships and working out appropriate referral routes. It is also about the additional supports that we mentioned earlier.
Everybody would acknowledge, I think, that food banks have been incredibly effective at meeting the needs of families when they are in crisis. In Barnardo’s response, I said that food banks, in enabling our workers to go to visit a family and offer an instant solution to the problem of there being no food in the house, have been incredibly valuable. However, Ken Macintosh is quite right to highlight the point that food banks are not an answer to the long-term problem of child poverty in Scotland and the rest of the UK.
On the point about giving cash, the decision to suppress the uprating of benefits will mean that benefits and tax credits continue to fall behind the increase in the cost of food, fuel and transport. I suggest that if we need to support people financially, we should do so through a welfare state that is adequate to meet the basic needs of families, in particular those with vulnerable children. My answer to the question about giving people cash is that yes, it should be done, but through a welfare system that meets people’s needs.
I was part of the committee’s previous discussion about the sanctions regime. Tackling a punitive and often illogical sanctions regime is part of ensuring that people have the cash that they need to support themselves while they move from one job to another.
10:30
Ultimately, a lack of cash is the root of the problem, whether that is caused by a reduction in benefits, the removal of benefits or a gap in payment. All of those mean that people do not have enough income to buy food or meet their outgoings. Logically, that leads to cash being part of the solution.
As Mark Ballard was saying, we need a proper benefits safety net to ensure that everybody has cash. Before the crisis, people were existing just above the crisis level. People are dipping down now because of the lack of income, and the trick is to raise those people out of the crisis that they are in. We are talking not just about benefit recipients but about people in low-paid employment. The majority of people in relative poverty are in work or in households that have at least one adult in work. It is a matter of examining their income and ensuring that they do not slide into crisis.
I am really thankful that food banks have done the work that they have—thank goodness that they have. In the long term, there is a need to consider people’s income and whether the benefits system actually supports people or not.
Annabelle, is your question in this area or in a different area?
It picks up on some of the points that have been made, but broadens them out a wee bit.
Go for it.
On the discussion about payments in kind or in cash, the committee had an interesting evidence session some weeks ago with those involved in the Scottish welfare fund on the front line. From memory, the majority view of the participants was that they wished to have the flexibility to make in-kind payments. The committee will be examining the issue in its broader consideration of the forthcoming legislation.
In relation to the debate that we are having now, what is the experience of the practitioners who are here today of the DWP hardship payment system? Are those payments being made available to people or not? It would be interesting for the committee to hear about your first-hand experience of that.
Many of you have discussed the impact of sanctions on people’s health, which Dr Ip mentioned, and their deleterious impact on people’s situations, with increased recourse to food banks. Mark Ballard described the sanctions system as “punitive and often illogical”. In its written submission, CAS highlights one of the action points as being a need to make
“urgent reforms to the sanctions regime, improving DWP administration”
and so on. We are having an evidence session with the DWP after this one. What kind of practical suggestions would you make to improve the sanctions regime, which we can see is having such a very negative impact on people’s lives?
I am sorry for having broadened things out so much, convener.
That is okay.
We found that the majority of people who receive a sanction, or certainly a significantly high number of them, are not aware of it—they just go to the bank and find that they have no money. Then, they come to the bureau, and it is up to the bureau to find out. They have no idea about the support that is available, about hardship payments, about how to appeal or about how to go to mandatory reconsideration. There is a huge lack of information for claimants, so they do not understand why they have been sanctioned, and they do not even know that they have been. There is a big lack of information.
Where a sanction is applied, people have to be given notice, but our briefing outlines the case of a person who found out on the day that she was supposed to get her payment. Not many of us could survive a break in payment if we just found out on the day that we would not get what we were expecting.
We also think that people should get at least one written warning, saying that they would have been sanctioned, so that they can learn from their mistakes.
Such easy administrative changes would help people to build resilience and would make the sanctions regime work by giving people warning so that they could change their behaviour. At the moment, there is a significant lack of information and people really do not understand why they have no money in their accounts.
Sanctions are clearly on the DWP’s agenda. Oxfam welcomed the Oakley review but we thought that it was probably too narrow. At this stage, there are problems with sanctions being misapplied and not leading to the intended outcomes. We need to look at the decision making around when sanctions are applied; what levels of sanctions are applied; and how sanctions are communicated. The Oakley review only really looked at the communication of sanctions rather than at how the system is working.
It is also important to realise that when sanctions are applied, there is currently an overturn rate of about 58 per cent, so it is not as though the sanctions regime is particularly effective.
On trying to influence the debate, an all-party parliamentary group on food poverty is currently being set up at Westminster but there is no Scottish MP on the group and, to the best of my knowledge, a visit to Scotland is not on the group’s timetable. Certainly this committee could play a role in feeding back some of the concerns to that group.
Thank you—that is a helpful suggestion.
Barnardo’s written evidence mentioned that one of the drivers of food poverty is the increase in the cost of food—a point that Mark Ballard made in his opening remarks. I do not think that he got any support for that point from people around the table. There is the general cost of living issue but does anyone have a specific view on the cost of food in relation to the increase in demand for food banks?
I am glad that Alex Johnstone has raised that specific point. The issue is not the rising cost of food; it is that the rising cost of food and of other basic living costs—
Energy as well.
—such as energy and transport has not been matched by an increase in wages. As I mentioned, the fact that benefits will not be uprated from 2013 to 2015 means that benefits will also be falling in real terms. There is a cost of living issue because of declining real wages and coming out of the recession and because of declining benefits.
The cost of food is one of the contributory factors, but the issue is not fuel, transport or food price inflation on its own; it is the fact that we have an increasingly insecure, low-wage economy. The increasing costs of basic goods create a difficult situation for vulnerable families, especially when the benefits that support people—and support as many people in work as out of work, as Keith Dryburgh said—are also being depressed.
The high cost of living in a city such as Aberdeen is a factor in the use of food banks now by people who are in work. Certainly that is the information that I have had back from the food bank partnership. Aspects such as the lack of available housing at low cost within the city, particularly in the private rented sector, are leading to people having to be much more reliant on such things as food banks to get by.
The cost of living is a factor. Aberdeen is a city that has a huge gap between the wealthy and the poor and the minimum wage and the living wage are issues for the city. There is some discussion about whether Aberdeen should have an Aberdeen weighting allowance or an Aberdeen living wage that reflects the local economy.
GPs see a lot of people in crisis because of benefit sanctions. In my practice, there was a lady who was on jobseekers allowance who could not sign on because she was in a job interview. When she told the Jobcentre Plus staff that she had an interview on the day that she was due to sign on, she received the hardline response that if she did not attend the job centre, she would be sanctioned. I think that she ended up going to the job interview because she wanted the job, but doing so caused her a great deal of stress, and she ended up being sanctioned. That is an example of the system working against people who are following the rules and trying their best. Those who have resilience can cope with that, but some people can be tipped over the edge by a small event like that. GPs see cases in which it has been hugely damaging. In the long term, people who are trying to better themselves can be tipped into a stress-related illness because of that kind of decision.
Thank you for that, Dr Ip. One of the reasons why we were keen to have you along today was because you had been quoted in the press as expressing concern about GPs being required to refer patients to food banks.
The SPICe briefing that we have been provided with tells us that the GP magazine Pulse—which is not a publication that I am particularly aware of—surveyed more than 500 GPs and found that 16 per cent had been asked to refer patients to food banks. It also notes that the annual conference of representatives of Scottish local medical committees passed a resolution about the issue. That is interesting because, at our previous evidence-taking session on food banks, I specifically asked the food bank providers whether they required people to be referred to them by a GP, and not one of them said that they did. That evidence does not tally with your experience. Can you tell us a bit more about your experience? Where is this a particular issue?
Having spoken to GPs in my area and elsewhere in Scotland, I can say that the experience of GPs is variable. There are some experiences that are not positive. For example, some GPs find that the local food bank has experienced significant pressure on its service and has decided to deal with that by asking people to get a referral from a health professional—usually a GP—to access the service. That is a sign that those services are under too much pressure and are unable to meet the demand.
There are other areas where the situation is quite positive. For example, when the new food bank opened in Rutherglen, it proactively informed local GPs of what it was offering and engaged them in promoting its services. The GP forum in Rutherglen was hugely supportive and identified a lot of the issues that we are talking about today. A lot of the people whom GPs see are vulnerable and are often in crisis. GPs want to be involved in helping people, and directing people to food banks is one way in which we can do that.
As I say, the experience of GPs is variable. That is probably a sign that the explosion in food bank provision has happened over a relatively short time. In some areas, the information that is going out to GPs and patients is good but, in others, because of the rapid expansion, things have not been as well connected with the health sector.
10:45
I want to pick up on Dr Ip’s point about GPs being asked to make referrals. He talked about the Rutherglen and Cambuslang Food Bank, which is doing a fantastic job. It is my understanding that most of the food banks in South Lanarkshire require a referral as a way of managing their system and of recording some data, which they are trying to do more of now. The referral does not have to be from a doctor; it could be from a social worker, a health visitor or anybody else who is working to support that individual. I just wanted to highlight the fact that the doctor is just one of a number of professionals who may be asked to refer folk on to services.
The experiences of citizens advice bureaux are similar to what Dr Ip has described. A few years ago, it would have been unheard of for a client to come in saying that they had not eaten, but the explosion in the number of such cases in the past three years has shown that that is now quite a common thing. It is difficult for an adviser who may be a volunteer to tell someone, “There’s nothing I can do for you other than give you a food bank referral.” Most bureaux have had to forge links urgently with their local authorities and with food banks, the Salvation Army and other organisations to ensure that there is somewhere for the volunteers to signpost people to, and the experience has been difficult.
One of our membership conditions is that we are non-judgmental and do not make decisions on entitlement, so we should not have to decide whether somebody is entitled to a food parcel. It should be the service that is offering the food that does that. That has caused some difficulties, but we have worked past them. It can be difficult for a bureau to ensure that clients are being signposted to the right place.
Our position is that if, in the course of seeing a patient and doing a mental and physical assessment, a GP finds that food is an issue, we want to be involved in giving people the right advice and signposting them to a good service, based on our knowledge of local services. We do not want people coming into the GP practice with the sole aim of getting a referral because they have been to a food bank and have been told, “Go back to your GP practice.” We feel that that lengthens the patient journey and adds to the practice workload.
We are already extremely pressed for GP appointments. Practices tell me that they are working flat out—I certainly work flat out when I am in the practice—so we do not want that additional step when people present to food banks. When we see that there is a need, we are happy to work with food banks to get people the right services.
Food banks are informal, whereas GP services are part of the state-run NHS. Is part of the problem to do with the interaction with informal organisations that are telling people to go to their GP? Do you have evidence that that is what is happening? How are you dealing with it where it happens?
You mentioned the survey that was done by the GP magazine. I do not have hard figures, but I have anecdotal evidence from GPs. For example, two patients turned up at a morning surgery having been told by a food bank administrator that they could not self-present but that they had to get a letter or a voucher.
For a lot of people who do not know how to access services, GP surgeries are often the first port of call, because they are visible and open and their services are available to patients. That is how it should be, but my concern—especially with the growing number of food banks—is that we are increasingly seen as the first port of call and that people are being told, “If you’ve got a food issue, go and see the GP.” I would not support that at all.
I will pick up the point about the proliferation of food banks. In Aberdeen, people can self-refer to the food banks, although I know that the Trussell Trust is perhaps a bit different, in that it requires a referral. The approach in Aberdeen, which was to build on the food banks partnership, aimed to establish some common standards and develop some guidance around how food banks should operate and communicate with different services, widening that to the whole public sector, so that knowledge about the impact of welfare reform increases in the city as a whole and the systems that cover how people access services and when they require them therefore become a lot clearer.
We have not succeeded in making every food bank in the city part of our food banks partnership, but part of the partnership approach is to ensure that a range of things covering diet, nutrition, money advice and personal budgeting become part of an overall approach to welfare reform. We work on a community planning partnership basis in relation to all those issues—we cannot treat food banks in complete isolation.
One of my issues and concerns around the proliferation of food banks is that, as the committee will have seen from the various case studies, many of the people who present at food banks are very vulnerable. The whole situation around food banks is ad hoc. People are providing support that, although it is well meaning, essentially does not comply with other things concerning vulnerable people. One of the things that perhaps needs to be considered is whether there is something that the Scottish Government could do—without getting into the bureaucracy of registration and so on—to provide practical guidance or some method of recognising what a food bank actually is.
That point is key. We are dealing with what is essentially an unregulated sector. I am greatly concerned by food banks referring people back to GPs, as that is a flaw in the process. You suggest that some kind of regulation is needed. Who should be doing that? Is it not the job of the local authority to do essentially what you are doing in Aberdeen, but with a stronger hand?
I have just floated the idea; I do not have the solution as such. However, the area needs to be examined. What would be involved? It is not necessarily up to a local authority to impose a solution on the voluntary sector; the issue needs to be taken on board through a wider discussion with food banks. What would help the development of food banks? Their purpose would need to be made very clear. How, in the long term, will they be part of a sustained approach to supporting people in poverty?
Even in a—
Other people are indicating that they wish to contribute. I want dialogue and discussion, but I want it to be fairly structured. Has Dave Kilgour finished?
Yes.
It is worth noting that not all food banks require a referral. The partner organisation that we work with—West Dunbartonshire Community Foodshare—does not operate a referral system. If someone turns up needing food, they will get food.
I am a little bit uncomfortable having a discussion about almost institutionalising food banks and food support. We need to view food banks as a temporary solution and to deal with the root causes of the problem, rather than embedding that solution within a response to tackling poverty. Although it is important that we support food banks and the many volunteers around the country who answer newspaper adverts and come and support them, we need to be cautious about where we put the balance of our energies between institutionalising that response and tackling the root causes.
Presumably, one of the strengths of food banks is that they are informal, community-led bodies.
Does Alex Johnstone want to come back in now?
We are getting the message from Jamie Livingstone that general regulation is not required. We have heard clearly that practice is different in different local authority areas, and that the service exists, to a significant extent, because it is required. Some form of overarching understanding is required within local authority areas, but I do not think that a one-size-fits-all approach is likely to be successful.
Dave Kilgour has vastly more experience with the situation in Aberdeen. The point that I was making was that the balance of our efforts should be focused on tackling the root causes of people going to food banks, rather than on seeking to regulate and institutionalise food banks.
I was about to go to Kevin Stewart, but a number of people wish to pick up that point. I will come back to him later.
On the role of local authorities, we are working hard to support food banks and other food poverty initiatives locally, so that we can build a stronger network, because there has to be a strong network.
As I am sure we stated in our written submission, council services—particularly services such as money matters or other money, debt and welfare rights advice services—have to deal with increasing numbers of folk who present with debt issues and require representation at appeals. That takes us away from doing the preventative work that we would far prefer to be doing in relation to income maximisation and supporting people’s financial capability. It should be noted that the impact of increasing sanctions and benefit delays—the things that we have discussed today—is making it very hard for our council services to do the work of focusing on preventative solutions that they should be doing.
My comment very much follows on from that. As all the participants have said, food banks are a response to families in extreme crisis. It is hard to imagine a more severe crisis than not being able to feed your family. The Christie commission highlighted that the way forward for public services has to be to take demand out of the system through preventative actions and early intervention and to tackle the root causes of inequality rather than have a crisis management system. No matter how much effort people put into crisis management, it will always be better to tackle the problem at the earlier stages.
There is an issue for some of the Barnardo’s projects that are trying to deliver early intervention. When we turn up to deliver an early intervention and discover that the parents’ primary concern is how they are going to put food on the table that night, anything that we are doing about parenting support has to wait until we have solved that problem. Crisis management is not a good use of an early intervention service. That is why food banks cannot be anything more than short-term crisis management, and we need long-term interventions, as Jamie Livingstone described, which actually tackle inequality.
As for the question about what a good service looks like, when I gave evidence about the sanctions regime, I highlighted some of the evidence from our homelessness service in North Lanarkshire, which works in particular with young people leaving the care system who are homeless and who need support to get them out of that crisis and into settled accommodation.
My understanding from talking to those who work in our service in North Lanarkshire is that the fact that someone is a young homeless care leaver does not automatically mean that they will not get sanctioned. Sanctioning a homeless care leaver is punitive and illogical in the extreme. It makes no sense in the context of what the proper path should be for getting that young person settled into appropriate accommodation, so that they are then able to deal with whatever led them to that situation. Sanctioning them is not an appropriate response and does nothing to support that young person on to a positive pathway.
I agree with Jamie Livingstone. Prevention is obviously the best approach in the long term.
I was trying to address the point about the proliferation of food banks, which are part of the alleviation of food poverty.
My lead concern is about vulnerable people in relation to the services that we provide. I know from some of the food banks in Aberdeen that the people who work as volunteers in food banks are often vulnerable people themselves. We need to look at that and ask how we can ensure that the overall situation for organisations and individuals using those services is protected.
11:00
Preventative measures are key, but unfortunately we are where we are. Sometimes we are not very good at exporting best practice from one part of the country to another. My experience of the partnership that has been formed in Aberdeen is that many of the folks who work in food banks—not as volunteers but as workers—are pretty experienced community workers who have been on the ground for a very long time. They signpost folk at the right point to money advice services and other ways of getting them out of the cycle. If that is going on right across the country, that is a very good thing; if it is not, we need to export it around the country.
As part of our on-going work, convener, we should continue to look at how various parts of the country are developing and linking services to create solutions, rather than just trying to fix crisis after crisis.
That is something that we can think about when we consider our report.
Does anyone want to respond to Kevin Stewart’s point about exporting best practice? Is that something that your organisations can be involved in? Obviously, a lot of you operate across the country.
Clearly, it has been a community response—it has been a bottom-up, rather than top-down, response and has been fantastic. Local organisations such as West Dunbartonshire Community Foodshare have come together to design a system that works for local people in their local community. It would be absolutely worth while to carry out research to find out what is happening across the country, because there are some very innovative and fantastic responses and it would be really interesting and useful to find out what they are and see whether they are applicable in a wider sense to different areas.
There is a knowledge gap regarding what those responses are, but I am aware of bureaux being involved in multiple activities across the country that are having great effects locally. It would be worth while to look into whether such approaches can be applied elsewhere.
I remain concerned that the solutions to the problem are still a long way off. In September 2013, the GPs at the deep end group reviewed its March 2012 report on the effects of the benefits reforms. The group was very concerned that things had got significantly worse since March 2012, in terms of welfare changes and benefit sanctions as a result of the Welfare Reform Act 2007, and the housing benefit, universal credit and personal independence payment changes resulting from the Welfare Reform Act 2012 are still in the pipeline. GPs in very deprived practices are concerned that although food banks are a good thing, they are just firefighting, and the fire rages on. Unless the system as a whole is more focused on our patients—on helping people with their finances and to navigate what is a complex system—I do not see things changing soon.
Again, my question is on how we should respond, in particular on how the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament should respond to the crisis. Keith Dryburgh said that food banks are a “fantastic” community response, and the Scottish Government has been very good by providing £1 million to support food banks. However, part of the welfare reform process has been to devolve responsibility for many of the welfare systems to local authorities and to the Scottish Government—crisis funds and housing benefits being the main ones. Our main political reaction has been to try to persuade the UK Government that it has got it wrong. I think that that will remain our main intent but clearly, an alternative is for the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament to decide to support our local authorities to enable them to intervene and make up the difference. That is what we did with the bedroom tax.
Would it be appropriate for us to make up the shortfall, given the sanctions and the financial hardship that are being imposed on people—by providing far greater financial support through our local authorities and giving more money to people through that route—or would that be a case of letting the UK Government “off the hook”, in the words of John Swinney? It is a big question.
Annabelle Ewing wants to be the first to respond.
If I may say so, my question was not for Annabelle—
Annabelle was the first to indicate.
I just want to add a few comments on that question, perhaps while our panellists are composing their responses to it. There is also another issue that I wish to raise. Obviously it would be fantastic if we could mitigate everything that is coming from Westminster, but the fact is that, financially, we simply cannot mitigate all the impacts of welfare reform. The solution, of course, is to take control of welfare in this Parliament.
Ken Macintosh mentioned that there are a few issues that we can deal with, but we cannot deal with most of the issues that we are hearing about today because we do not have the power to do so. I would argue that we should get the power to do something about it. We would make a much better job of it than successive Westminster Governments.
Of course, if we take money for one thing out of a fixed budget, we are taking away that money from something else. I do not know which budget has to be—
We could take the money out of the preventative spend budget.
One person at a time, please.
We could, but we have heard that preventative spend is very important.
While the panel members are thinking about Ken Macintosh’s question, the other issue that I want to raise is the impact on children. In 2013-14, the number of people who had recourse to the Trussell Trust food banks included 22,387 children. I find that figure astonishing and appalling. Are those children on somebody’s radar? I would assume that they are, through the various processes of the local authorities and health services. Also, how is it that an arm of the state, the DWP, can in effect sanction children? How can the DWP take food out of the mouths of children, which is what it is doing when it sanctions adults with children? How can it deal with children in that way? Is that not a breach of children’s rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, among other things? How can that happen in the 21st century?
Sorry, but I get really annoyed when I think about these issues. That is the key point that I wished to raise.
Do people want to respond to the points from Ken Macintosh and Annabelle Ewing?
I will not get into the independence debate, because I will get in trouble with CAS if I do.
The Scottish Government has had some success in mitigating the impact of welfare reforms. The extra funding for council tax reduction and the Scottish welfare fund for the bedroom tax have had an impact, and I think that things would be worse in Scotland had the Scottish Government not done those things.
However, there is the issue that the policy is wrong, so spending money on mitigating the policy that is causing the problem in the first place is not the most efficient way of doing things. I do not think that we can ever mitigate the effects completely, but there is a role for the Scottish Government in there.
On the point about the children, our figures show that the majority of people who need food parcels are single men with no caring responsibilities. However, a significant minority of people who need charitable support have dependent children—27 per cent of them. Annabelle Ewing is absolutely right. When people get sanctioned, their children are not a mitigating factor—they still get sanctioned—so there is a significant concern that there are families out there in which the children are paying a price either for a policy or for something that their parents may or may not have done.
Annabelle Ewing talked about children being on the radar. As Dave Kilgour said, there are groups of volunteers supporting vulnerable individuals, and sometimes the volunteers can be vulnerable as well. In South Lanarkshire, our voluntary sector workers and all our partners are well connected to getting it right for every child, so they know what to do if there is a child involved and how to ensure that those who should know about such a case do know about it. I would not be able to say with any confidence that every food bank volunteer has that knowledge. It is not a question of bringing in bureaucracy, but we should be aware of the fact that vulnerable people are using those services, so we must ensure that the people who are operating them have the skills and abilities to refer folk on to the right services.
As CAS has said, the majority—I think that in South Lanarkshire the figure is 51 per cent—of folk using food banks are single, and mainly men with no caring responsibilities. Not all the food banks are breaking down their data yet, but I know from a couple of them that 24 per cent of people using those food banks are single parents and 13 per cent are parents. If you add that together, it is nearly 40 per cent, so it is still a large number.
The first thing to say is that food banks are a crisis response, so they are used by families who might be doing quite well and surviving but who experience a sudden sanction, a benefit delay or an issue with a payday loan that tips them into crisis. They might not be families who have any requirement to be identified by social services or anybody else until the point at which they suddenly find themselves in an unexpected crisis.
That provides a huge challenge to the new statutory GIRFEC system that is going to come in with the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014. The act gives responsibilities to public bodies for the wellbeing of children. As Annabelle Ewing has passionately pointed out, a child cannot have wellbeing if its parents are reliant on food parcels to feed it. There is a big issue to do with where those responsibilities overlap, and it comes down to the minutiae of the Scotland Act 1998 in terms of situations in which local authorities have responsibility for the wellbeing of children but the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament and local authorities do not have any responsibility for the general benefits system.
A complicated set of factors needs to be unpicked to clarify the responsibilities, but if local authorities and health boards are going to fulfil their responsibility for the wellbeing of all children in their area under the 2014 act, they will have to address the needs of children who are made vulnerable by parents in crisis, whether because of a benefit delay or sanction or because of the bedroom tax cutting payments for accommodation.
Oxfam’s submission highlights a previous report entitled “Walking the Breadline”, which made a number of recommendations. For example, it recommended that the House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee conduct an urgent parliamentary inquiry into the relationship between benefit delay, error or sanctions, welfare reform changes and the growth of food poverty; and it recommended that the DWP should publish data on the number and type of households deprived of benefits by reason of benefit delay, error or sanctions, and commission independent monitoring of the roll-out of universal credit to ensure that there is no unintentional increase in fuel poverty. I am sure that you will want to respond to other points that have been raised in the discussion, but can you also tell us how you have got on with pushing those organisations?
The all-party parliamentary group is one response to the “Walking the Breadline” report, and I would advise you to watch this space on a follow-up to “Walking the Breadline” shortly.
To pick up on Ken Macintosh’s point, we have to respond to the crisis and we should not argue about where the money is coming from. The money needs to be put in place to ensure that people have food when they need it. That is the bottom line. The Scottish Government has taken some welcome mitigation measures, such as the emergency food aid action plan, funding for the bedroom tax and the Scottish welfare fund, and that is all great, but it is mitigating a problem. We need to turn the spotlight on the root causes of that problem, and the Welfare Reform Committee has a role to play in that.
Alongside that, there are measures that the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government can take to tackle some of the underlying problems, such as in-work poverty and decent work, through encouraging the move from the minimum wage to the living wage and through the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Bill, for example. We can also recognise that poverty is not just about a shortage of money but about a shortage of power and influence. We have been campaigning for the creation of a poverty commissioner in Scotland to put a pro-poor lens over all decision making in this place.
More broadly, we have just come through a major financial crisis, and Oxfam’s work internationally suggests that when we are responding to crises, we should not simply try to rebuild a model that was not particularly effective or resilient in the first place. Instead we need to build back better. However, the model that we seem intent on building back towards is one that still has poverty at its core. Prior to the financial crisis, we had around one in five people across the UK in poverty, and we seem to want to go straight back to the same model.
We need to do better than that. We need to broaden our horizons beyond a narrow focus on GDP and whether economic growth goes up or down, to look at the quality of that economic growth and who benefits from it. That may well involve looking at such things as rebalancing the UK’s books and progressive taxation, not on the poorest and most vulnerable people as happens now but on those who are more than capable of paying their share.
The Scottish Parliament has a role in doing whatever it can to mitigate the worst impact of hunger in Scotland, but we need to go beyond that and look at the root cause, both within our control here in Scotland and across the UK. To return to CAS’s point, Oxfam does not take a view on the constitution, but we do have a view on poverty and inequality, and, regardless of where the levers are sitting, we need to do better.
We are scheduled to finish this session now, I am afraid, although I am sure that we could go on a lot longer. I thank the witnesses for coming along to give us the benefit of their experience and their thoughts on the subject. The committee will consider its next steps later.
11:17 Meeting suspended.Next
Benefit Sanctions