The next item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-08742, in the name of Stuart McMillan, on society’s increasing reliance on food banks. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament notes with concern the ever increasing rise in the number of people relying on foodbanks in Scotland and across the UK; considers that it is not only the unemployed, but also those underemployed or underpaid who are increasingly becoming reliant on foodbanks to feed themselves and their families; acknowledges the hard work and dedication of the staff and volunteers at foodbanks in West Scotland and across the rest of the country, and believes that changes to benefits, rises in energy costs and static incomes have helped contribute to such a large increase in the need for such aid.
12:33
I thank all members—particularly Opposition members—who supported the motion, which has allowed the debate to take place. That has given the Parliament the opportunity to discuss what is a worrying issue in Scotland and, indeed, across the whole of the United Kingdom. It is an issue that I would much prefer not to discuss, but we need to do so.
I thank the Trussell Trust, Barnardo’s, Oxfam, Nourish Scotland and Citizens Advice Scotland for providing briefings prior to the debate. I welcome representatives from the Trussell Trust, who are in the public gallery. The commitment and dedication of the volunteers at the Trussell Trust and at other emergency food providers are to be whole-heartedly commended. I also thank everyone across Scotland who volunteers their time in their communities, whether in food banks or in other activities, to provide support for those in need.
It is important to put on the record the work of food banks and what they are. A food bank is a place where, after referral, people can go to obtain food.
The Trussell Trust’s food banks provide a minimum of three days’ worth of nutritionally balanced emergency food; they also support people in crisis. Clients cannot obtain unlimited food—they may redeem up to three food bank vouchers in a row. More than 90 per cent of the food that is given out is donated by the public. I saw that at first hand when I took part in a food collection day before Christmas at the Tesco store in Port Glasgow. I was genuinely overwhelmed by the generosity of the public on that day.
Every person who goes to a Trussell Trust food bank is referred by a professional such as a social worker, a welfare rights adviser, a tenancy support worker or a school liaison officer, and the food bank tries to work with the individual to help them to resolve the underlying cause of the crisis.
Members who look at the scale of the issue will be shocked. In 2011, there was one Trussell Trust food bank operating in Scotland, but by October 2013, the number had increased to 43. There are more than 400 food banks operating throughout the UK, and the Scottish Government report, “Overview of Food Aid Provision in Scotland”, which was published in December 2013, identified 55 food banks and soup kitchens. However, many independent, community and small-scale providers are not reflected in the figures.
A report that was published by Church Action on Poverty and Oxfam stated:
“We estimate that over 500,000 people are now reliant on food aid—the use of food banks and receipt of food parcels—and this number is likely to escalate further over the coming months.”
That is a UK figure.
However, there are concerns that the figures reflect only part of the problem. Nourish Scotland is concerned that the statistics that show increased demand for emergency food provision are just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, Citizens Advice Scotland told me that, in January alone, Scottish citizens advice bureaux advisers referred more than 400 people to a food bank or other emergency support. That is the highest monthly figure that CAS has ever seen.
Oxfam told me that visits to West Dunbartonshire Community Foodshare’s service have increased markedly. The service had 186 visits last October, 215 in November, 237 in December, and 358 in January this year. The increasing trend is affecting families, too: there were visits from 36 families in October, 64 in November, 123 in December, and 145 in January.
Of the 1,967 vouchers that have been distributed by the Inverclyde food bank since it started operating in April 2010, 250 have gone to families and 266 to single parents. In total, those 1,967 vouchers have fed 2,571 adults and 974 children.
More recent figures for Scotland estimate that somewhere around 55,000 or more Scots rely on emergency food aid. As Oxfam states,
“No one turns up at Foodbanks because there is an opportunity for free food. They are driven there in sheer desperation.”
The charity indicates that 34 per cent of those who turn to emergency food banks are experiencing some sort of benefit delay. Citizens Advice Scotland and the Trussell Trust put the figure at 30 per cent.
Citizens Advice Scotland states:
“Evidence from bureaux, and from food banks themselves, indicate that benefit delays and welfare reform are driving increased need for food parcels.”
According to the Trussell Trust,
“Since April 2013, welfare reforms have impacted many people and resulted in more referrals to foodbanks as a result of benefit delays or changes.”
As we know, people on benefits usually have the lowest incomes, with no savings to cover unforeseen circumstances. Even a slight delay in receiving benefit can mean that they have no money to buy food for themselves or their children.
One of the most alarming pieces of evidence from Oxfam highlights the depths of some people’s distress. Some people who use food banks have actually started handing back food, not because they do not need the food that they have been given but because they cannot afford to turn on the electricity to cook it. What does it say about our society when people cannot even afford to cook the food that they have been given?
Despite all that evidence, the UK Westminster Government fails to act—and it is not just the coalition Government, as we are now in the middle of a Dutch auction between the Tories and Labour to see who can cut benefits the most.
As if that is not bad enough, we heard the news this week that members of the House of Lords are complaining about the declining standards of their subsidised catering facilities, with one peer being “scarred” when his table booking was cancelled suddenly and his party were “unable to lunch elsewhere” because his wife was wearing a tiara. That surely proves that the Westminster elite is completely out of touch with the reality of austerity UK.
However, there is an opportunity to change all that.
Will the member take an intervention?
Not at the moment, thank you.
The member is finishing.
Monday’s Financial Times highlighted that Scotland is a wealthy nation, but our wealth is squandered by incompetence at Westminster, with a Parliament and an elite that care more about tiaras than folk who are in sheer desperation.
Between 2011 and 2013, Scotland experienced faster growth in the number of food banks launching with the Trussell Trust than any other part of the UK. Food banks have helped 48,921 people since 1 April last year. According to Barnardo’s, Christmas dinner came in a food parcel for a “disturbing” number of children last year because of the impact of rising living costs and changes to the welfare system.
I did not get involved in politics to mitigate anything, to welcome the increased number of food banks or to provide food parcels for Christmas dinner. I got involved to help Scotland and its citizens achieve all that they can be.
Before I open up the debate, I indicate that a great number of members wish to speak. However, I will not be able to call them unless the debate is extended and, even if it is extended, I will have some difficulty calling everyone. However, I am minded to accept from Stuart McMillan, under rule 8.14.3 of standing orders, a motion without notice to extend the debate by up to 30 minutes.
Motion moved,
That, under Rule 8.14.3, the debate be extended by up to 30 minutes.—[Stuart McMillan.]
Motion agreed to.
Speeches must be of four minutes, please.
12:41
I congratulate Stuart McMillan on securing the debate and I associate myself with his comments about all the volunteers who make our food banks run week in, week out.
I have visited a number of food banks in the Lothians; I have also visited the Cyrenians’ FareShare project, whose people go round all the big supermarkets to collect canned and other goods, gather it all in one place and then distribute it to the food banks. I guess that if there is any good news to be found in the food bank agenda it is the fact that some people are being given the opportunity to gain skills through their work with organisations such as the Cyrenians and other social enterprises that facilitate food banks. Although there is a lot about food banks that angers us a great deal, the work that those people do helps them to regain access to the labour market.
The Citizens Advice Scotland report that feeds its briefing for today’s debate mentions payday loans, and it would be remiss of me not to recognise the degree to which payday loans increasingly force people to turn to food banks for help. I very much like the reference in Stuart McMillan’s motion to people who are unemployed, underemployed and underpaid all being reliant on food banks. I think that that gives us a broad picture of the groups of people who rely on them.
Whenever I talk about payday loans, I try to make the point that it is wrong to assume that people who go to payday loan companies are necessarily vulnerable. The statistics tell us that a large number of people who use those companies own their own homes, are in full-time work and have families, cars and all the rest of it. They also tend to have too much month left at the end of the money, which is what forces them to go to payday loan companies and food banks for help.
I want to talk specifically about a very vulnerable group of people in Edinburgh—people in temporary accommodation—who are heavily reliant on food banks and have an increasing propensity to use them because of difficult circumstances. There is huge demand for affordable housing that cannot be met in Edinburgh, where it is quite possible for people to live temporarily in flats or bed-and-breakfast accommodation for three months or, in some cases, for up to six months. The problem is that someone who lives in a hostel or a B and B has no access whatsoever to kitchen facilities, although they might be lucky, as some B and Bs in Edinburgh give people access to a kettle. However, if they go to a food bank for a food parcel, there is a massive reduction in the types of items that they can take.
In an article in The Guardian a few weeks ago, Patrick Wintour talked about a food bank within a food bank and the notion of a kettle box, with food banks having to make up bags of food whose preparation requires no electricity or heat. Food banks are having to accept that a kettle box of food, which is made up of dry crackers and biscuits, tinned sweetcorn and tinned potatoes, for example, will not remotely meet nutritional standards. There is no chance of such food meeting daily nutritional requirements, never mind meeting the needs of people who live off it for six months. I want to emphasise that—I expected to speak further down the speakers’ list, so that I could add to what other speakers said.
We must be careful not to promote certain activities by the way in which we provide public services through our local authorities. The City of Edinburgh Council, for example, meets the full cost per night for hostels and B and Bs in the city. I challenge it to ask what it gets in return for the £45 per head that it pays out, regardless of whether a room is filled. At the moment, those hostels and B and Bs get £45 a night to provide no kitchen facilities and only the possibility of access to a kettle so that people can feed themselves.
As much as we share our rage today about the propensity for people to have to rely on food banks, we need to ask some hard questions about what our local authorities are doing and the degree to which we can help them to stop things such as kettle boxes becoming an ever bigger part of our food bank problem.
If members wish to be called earlier or later in a members’ business debate, they can advise the Presiding Officer of that and the reasons for it, and requests will be taken into account and accommodated as much as possible.
12:45
I advise that I am quite happy to be called at this stage, Presiding Officer.
I congratulate Stuart McMillan on securing this debate on what is a very important issue. Like him, I regret the need to have the debate, because a society as wealthy as ours should not need food banks. However, it is important that the Parliament debates the issue, and on that basis I thank Stuart McMillan.
The use of food banks is an important issue both in the West Scotland region, which Stuart McMillan represents, and across Scotland. In my area, we have food banks in both Cumbernauld and Kilsyth—they are small, independent, local initiatives—and other organisations, such as the Salvation Army, that provide resilience for people. I put on the record my thanks to those organisations for their efforts.
Through the work of the Welfare Reform Committee, we know that even in the smallest and most remote communities in Scotland there is a tendency for food banks to play an ever more important role in providing assistance to our fellow citizens.
Mr Hepburn, I am sorry to stop you. I do not know about other members, but I am having some difficulty hearing you. Will you adjust your microphone? I also ask broadcasting staff to check the sound level. Thank you.
I will try to shout as well, Presiding Officer. Let us see if that helps.
The Welfare Reform Committee will engage with the issue and look at the role of food banks in due course.
The Trussell Trust advises that it launched its first food bank in 2000. That reminds us that food banks have been required for a longer time than the welfare reform period, but there can be no doubt that that process has been the major driver of the increased reliance on food banks. The Trussell Trust states that, between April 2013 and the beginning of February 2014, the reasons given most often for food bank referrals to it included benefit delay at 30 per cent and benefit change at 20 per cent. Oxfam states:
“Most people ... who turn to emergency food banks are experiencing some sort of benefit delay.”
Barnardo’s Scotland mentions
“cuts to the levels of welfare support ... delays in getting benefits”
and the
“stricter sanction regime”
as being important drivers of the increased reliance on food banks.
As Stuart McMillan said, there has been a large growth in the number of food banks that the Trussell Trust supports, from one food bank to 43 in the period 2011 to 2014. That is the period over which the welfare reforms have been put in place.
In the face of that reality, we do well to remind ourselves that the UK Government wrote a letter to Glasgow City Council in which it claimed that its welfare reform process is not the driver of the increased number of food banks. Incredibly, it claimed that the increase was due to supermarkets reducing their food waste—so it is supermarket efficiency that is the driver and not the UK Government’s welfare reform process. Frankly, UK Government ministers are divorced from reality. I regret that there are no members of the UK Government parties in the chamber to defend that position. It would have been interesting to hear whether they concur with it.
However, I believe that supermarkets have a role to play, and I will give an example from my constituency. Kilsyth community food bank recently entered a partnership with the local branch of Lidl, which will now provide it with food that it can no longer sell but which is still edible. That is a sensible approach on which both organisations should be congratulated. In this day and age, it is frankly criminal for supermarkets to dispose of edible food by putting it in the bin and sending it to landfill. To my mind, that is a greater crime than a desperate person feeding themselves by retrieving such foodstuffs that have been binned. Supermarkets should be supporting food banks.
I thank Stuart McMillan once more and hope that, if we ever debate the issue of food banks again, we will be talking about an historical aberration rather than an on-going reality.
I again ask members to keep to the four-minute limit. I allowed Mr Hepburn a bit extra for the interruption.
12:50
First of all, I thank Stuart McMillan for bringing the issue to the chamber. I have to say, though, that I regret the tone of some of his comments. I do not imagine that he does, but I certainly do.
When I attended Holyrood magazine’s recent food conference, I noted that the debate shifted to an issue that was not part of the programme: the extreme contrasts in Scotland with regard to food. The Parliament often has debates on Scotland’s food and drink sector and celebrates how good our export figures are or the excellence of our produce. However, there are people in Scotland who are living in food poverty, and we must address such extremes.
Food poverty is increasing across the UK. Indeed, the Trussell Trust’s briefing makes it clear that the number of people whom it supports has increased dramatically. Benefit changes have undoubtedly pushed families and individuals into situations where they can longer feed themselves or their households. For many people, the benefit cuts have been punitive. Moreover, emergency food is often needed because benefit payments have been delayed or because of difficulties and delays in the transition between different payments. Surely those in the chamber who support the welfare changes cannot support a welfare system that is dysfunctional and failing in its administration.
For those who are living comfortably, a few days’ delay in their income will make little difference, but for those who are poor and living on the margins of society, such delays can have a big impact. The CAS briefing shows that more than two thirds of clients who needed a food parcel were experiencing issues with the benefits system. However, if we see that as the only reason, we cannot fully address the problem. Those who work in the field have cited redundancy, the low-wage economy, zero-hours contracts, mental health problems and crisis situations as examples of the other pressures that people are facing.
Income is key to addressing the issue. Wages and benefits have not kept pace with the increase in the cost of living, which includes the increase in food prices. Indeed, Barnardo’s briefing says that between 2007 and 2012 food prices rose between 19 and 47 per cent. Such figures also contribute to the debate on how we can make food affordable while still providing a fair income to the producer.
Last week, the Parliament debated the common agricultural policy. Many of our farmers receive public money to produce their excellent produce and, although they provide multiple benefits for our environment and rural economies, we simply cannot get away from the fact that lots of people in Scotland cannot afford to buy that produce. It might be difficult for some to imagine that the cost of a family meal could be beyond a person’s budget but, as Kez Dugdale pointed out, some people are in a desperate situation. Food banks have had to create kettle packs for people who have no cooking facilities or money to pay their energy bills.
There has been a growth in food banks in my own region, with six now open in Fife. When I visited the Trussell Trust in Dundee, I spoke to Ewan Gurr about the organisation. I also recently attended the launch of Kirkcaldy Foodbank and would like to recognise the hard work of the churches and faith groups across Kirkcaldy that came together to create it. Support from the community and local businesses has been strong, but the demand puts pressure on communities. Yesterday, the local papers reported that Glenrothes food bank had run out of food and was unable to provide support to people. There are also food banks in Leven, Dunfermline, Cupar and Anstruther—indeed, they are all across the kingdom, from poor to affluent communities.
From my visits to food banks and from talking to volunteers, I have seen that the creation of food banks is a community response to the increasing poverty that people see around them and that it is a charitable act. However, I have also seen that people do not accept that it has to be this way. In his recent and deeply regrettable comments on food banks, Iain Duncan Smith looked to deny their reality, but if we accept their reality we can deal with the issues that have given rise to the need for them. We should support food banks but our aim, through measures such as a living wage, a functioning and fair welfare system and better pay and conditions at work, must be to see the end of them.
Many thanks. If members keep to four minutes, we should get everyone in.
12:54
I thank Stuart McMillan for securing this debate but, like everyone else, I regret that we are even having to talk about the issue. This is really not where we should be in 2014 in Scotland.
Although I do not want to rehearse the figures that other members have mentioned—they are on the record, so there is no need to do that—if two thirds of those who report to food banks are citing benefit issues as their main concern, it is important that the UK Government understands that and looks at the systems. The systems should work; we should not be in position whereby we do not give people enough money.
I also note that fewer than 5 per cent of food bank clients are homeless. Therefore, we have a structural problem because those who have a roof over their head and may well be working are nonetheless living in poverty. That is not, I suspect, where historically we would have thought our communities would need help; we have tended to believe that it was the down-and-outs who were the problem. Instead, we are talking about ordinary people who just do not have enough money. That is a slightly different situation to be in from what we might have thought would be the case.
Members have mentioned the fact that recent food price increases have been disproportionate. I am grateful to Kezia Dugdale for her comments on the nutritional effect of not being able to cook food. However, a person in that position would not even be able to heat, let alone cook food. Furthermore, the absence of heating cannot possibly do any good to the human body.
The Scottish Government report that looked at the issue recently—I think that it reported in the past two or three months—noted that the Trussell Trust statistics were probably quite representative of what is happening in Scotland. That is helpful—I am looking at the Minister for Housing and Welfare when I say this—because it looks as though the data is being collected and that we will have a sensible handle on what is going on, even if we would rather not have the problem at all.
I have visited Angus food bank, particularly the food bank in Brechin where I stay. I pay tribute to those who work and volunteer there—and those who train the volunteers—as well as those who manage the food banks across the country. That is enormously important work. I also note that this is not a problem that will go away. However much we want to blame the UK Government for the situation and even though a lot of it does land at its door, part of it is, I guess, just a consequence of the international downturn that we have seen, although a lot depends on how you respond to that situation. The issue will not go away any time soon. We will continue to need volunteers in our communities; we will continue to need donations. Jamie Hepburn mentioned that supermarkets can play a part in that, but our communities—we, as members of our local community—will have to donate food and encourage others to do so because in Scotland we are going to have to look after our own.
I hesitate to point this out, but I like to think that if we had the powers of an independent country, we would be able to deal with some of the situation. However, for the moment, we will have to do so with the resources that we have. That, Presiding Officer, includes you and me.
12:57
I join others in congratulating Stuart McMillan on securing the debate but I, too, wish to express my disappointment because it struck me that part of his speech had more to do with an argument about the constitution than the reality that people are living with. We are facing a cost of living crisis, the like of which has not been seen since the 1930s. Incomes are stagnating at best and falling behind at worst. I will illustrate that point. Since 2010, wages in Scotland have fallen in real terms by £27.30 a week. That is £1,420 a year, which is a lot of money for a low-paid worker.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s report “A Minimum Income Standard for the UK in 2013” highlighted that the cost of a basket of essential goods and services has increased by almost 25 per cent in the past five years. That is staggering. The cost of bread, milk, electricity and gas are all up. Over the three years since the Tories came to office, prices have risen faster in the UK than in any other G7 country. Times are tough and they are increasingly tough for the employed, as well as the unemployed.
I am particularly pleased that the work of West Dunbartonshire Community Foodshare has been highlighted. That organisation is in my constituency. I have been out on a number of occasions, helping it to collect food and donations in the communities that we serve. I pay particular tribute to not just the management committee but all the hard-working volunteers that support it. The organisation was recently awarded £50,000 by the Big Lottery Fund and I am extremely grateful that that has happened because the service is finding that demand is increasing. I will not repeat the figures that Stuart McMillan has shared; suffice it to say that the number of people using the service has increased by 100 per cent just in the past four months and, over the same period, there has been a staggering 400 per cent increase in the number of families using the service.
The Trussell Trust reported in April 2013 that the number of people in Scotland using food banks had risen by 150 per cent from 5,726 to a staggering 14,318. It will now, of course, be more. One third of those were children and one fifth were in full-time employment. The latest research from the Debt Advisory Centre Scotland shows that one Scot in 10 borrowed money to pay for food in July last year. One in 10 is 500,000 people. We can only begin to imagine what the numbers are like now.
Although we are very grateful for the work of all the volunteers in communities throughout Scotland, it is a damning indictment of our society that food banks even exist. It appears from anecdotal evidence from Citizens Advice Scotland that some local authorities have been sending people to food banks rather than providing crisis grants.
Of course, all that is happening while the Scottish welfare fund remains hugely underspent. The most recent figures published show that only 11 per cent of the £33 million available has gone out the door. That is at a time when the need is self-evident. That benefit has been devolved. It is in our hands already, but we cannot get the money out of the door. I think that the minister would agree that that is appalling and it would be helpful to know what action is being taken.
We asked the Scottish Government to commission research and I am pleased that that has now been published, but what will the Government do? Of course we should challenge the Tories and Lib Dems at Westminster, but it is not enough for the Government simply to wash its hands and blame Westminster. We created the Parliament to protect people when times are tough. Let us not turn the matter into yet another issue that is seen through a constitutional prism but take action to protect people who are suffering in communities throughout Scotland now.
13:01
For anyone with an interest in social and economic justice and fairness, this, of all debates, must get the political juices and emotions flowing. However, I am equally embarrassed, ashamed and angry at having to take part in such a debate in a wealthy, developed nation. People in my home village, my county, my country, throughout the nations of the UK and way beyond cannot feed their children, their families or, indeed, themselves.
More than 50,000 of our fellow Scots sought help in the past year alone. That is the equivalent of every man, woman and child in a full Ibrox or Celtic Park on a Saturday going hungry. It is a huge and growing scandal. Those who present to food banks are decent people. They are often hard-working people who are keeping down a job or several jobs trying to survive but they are forced to wipe away their tears, swallow their pride and walk through the doors of the food bank to ask for help to feed their children.
I have been unemployed but I am very fortunate that it was for a short period and neither I nor any members of my family have ever ended up going hungry. I cannot imagine what it is like to look into the cupboard or fridge and see little or nothing there—indeed, I do not think that any of us can. I cannot imagine the mental turmoil, the pressure, the feelings and thoughts that people experience in the days and weeks leading up to the time when they are forced into a situation in which the food bank is their only option. We can only wonder how that feels. Even the thought of it makes my stomach churn as I speak. God knows what it is like for those who are in the real-life situation.
We must be honest that the growth in the use of food banks has not occurred by chance. It has not occurred because of an individual’s behaviour. It has not happened because of somebody’s bad luck. It has happened because of deliberate political choices and a decades-long adherence to the doctrine of neoliberalism. That is an ideology that promotes the rule of the market, the free movement of capital and goods, deregulation, trickle-down economics, an attack on organised labour and freedom from the state. It celebrates reducing public expenditure for social services such as health and education, promotes privatisation and promotes individualism over a collective approach to our economy and society.
It is a doctrine that has dominated political thinking over the past 40 years and has resulted in the mass redistribution of resources from poor people to rich people; repeated attacks on trade unions; market deregulation; the privatisation of our public services including, in some countries, the water that people drink; and poverty and food shortages across the developing world, which are now coming to us in the developed world. At the same time, the biggest corporations have been rewarded with yet more tax cuts and profits. All the time, benefits, services and social protection have been reduced. Food banks, homelessness, low pay and insecure work are the symptoms of such a system.
Stuart McMillan referred to Westminster as the problem. I am as happy as anyone to put the boot into the Tories and the Liberals, but there are food banks in France, Spain and across the EU. Tory cuts exacerbate the problem, but they are not the root cause of the problem. That is much, much deeper. Of course, it is telling that not one Tory or pathetic Liberal could turn up to this debate to take the consequences. They are usually here for every members’ business debate, yet there is not one of them here today.
I would like this to be a world in which we see feeding people as our priority over profit, and in which we use new technology and human ingenuity to banish the scourge of hunger for everyone.
13:06
I, too, thank Stuart McMillan for securing the debate.
In terms of total gross domestic product, the UK is the seventh wealthiest nation, yet it is the sixth most unequal of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. A study by the Trussell Trust states:
“over 50% of children living in poverty in the UK are from working households and many of the people helped by food banks are in work”.
The latest figures from the Trussell Trust highlight that, in the six months to September 2013, 350,000 people received three days’ emergency food from one of its food banks. That is eight times the 41,000 who needed support in the year to March 2010, which in turn was substantially up from the 3,000 who needed support from the trust in 2005-06.
In Scotland, it is estimated that nearly 49,000 people have received assistance from a food bank in the 10 months to January of this year. In my constituency, there are food banks in Broomhouse, Oxgangs, Saughton Mains, Sighthill and Wester Hailes.
Why, in such a rich country, do so many people require support from food banks? A survey that was carried out by the Trussell Trust last year found that 34 per cent of people using food banks needed help as a result of benefit delay, that 19 per cent were there due to benefit changes and another 18 per cent were there as a result of low income. Only 4 per cent were referred to the food bank because they were homeless. Citizens Advice found that
“delays in payments … Jobseeker sanctions … sickness benefit reassessments”
and the bedroom tax
“are all placing a significant burden on many low income families and making it difficult for them to put food on the table.”
An Oxfam study found that
“Some of the increase in the number of people using food banks is caused by unemployment, increasing levels of underemployment, low and falling income, and rising food and fuel prices.”
The difficulty of falling income is further compounded when we factor in the fact that food prices have risen by nearly 13 per cent above inflation over the past six years, and the costs of gas and electricity have increased by 37 per cent since October 2010. At present, the welfare system and the setting of the national minimum wage are reserved to Westminster. The UK Government has witnessed those rises but has done little to ensure that benefit levels and the minimum wage have kept pace with inflation.
The Oxfam report “Walking the breadline—the scandal of food poverty in 21st century Britain” highlights growing concern. It says:
“the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food … recently pointed to increases in the number of food banks in developed countries as an indicator that governments are in danger of failing in their ‘duty to protect’ under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights ... which states that all citizens should have access to adequate diet without having to compromise other basic needs.”
The Scottish Government has tried to mitigate the effects of the welfare cuts by establishing the Scottish welfare fund. The budget that was passed yesterday will increase the money that is available through discretionary housing payments to the limit of close to £23 million that the Department for Work and Pensions has imposed. I welcome John Swinney’s announcement yesterday that, if the DWP refuses the request to lift the cap on discretionary housing payments, the Scottish Government will make a further £12 million available to social landlords to prevent evictions that would be due solely to the bedroom tax.
Conclude, please.
Instead of compensating for Westminster benefit cuts, surely it would be better to tackle the problems of poverty head on in Scotland by controlling the benefits system here in Holyrood. Scotland in the 21st century is a wealthy country, but Westminster is taking us back to Victorian poverty levels. We need to build a society that we can all be proud of. The opportunity to begin doing that will come in September.
13:10
The existence of food banks in Scotland is truly saddening; it shames and embarrasses us all. What is worse than their existence is that the need for them is growing day by day and week by week. I was shocked to read in the Citizens Advice Scotland briefing that, from April to September last year, almost six times as many Scots turned to food parcels as did so in the same period the year before.
As other members have said, it is ironic that food banks also showcase what is good about our society. Volunteers who offer their time and energy to ensure the success of their local food bank display amazing civic duty and all that is inspiring and best in people.
However, as Neil Findlay pointed out, this is 2014, not 1914. We are one of the richest countries in the world. When we hear about mums and dads walking miles each way to pick up food to put on the table for their children, when we hear that senior doctors and academics are concerned that hunger in Britain has reached the level of a public health emergency and when teachers tell us that children are turning up at our schools hungry, that makes me extremely angry and I know that colleagues across the chamber—except for the no-show Tories and Lib Dems—feel the same.
There is no doubt that the austerity measures, taxation policies and welfare reforms that the coalition Government has implemented have been key factors in the rise of food banks. We have seen tax cuts for the richest millionaires, while hard-pressed families have had their tax credits cut and their child benefit frozen. The bedroom tax hits the poor and the disabled hardest, while the Government turns a blind eye to tax evasion by multinational companies. Reforms to benefits have seen people sanctioned and left penniless.
I visited Dunfermline Foodbank recently and I was told that, in the week when the bedroom tax was introduced last April, the numbers seeking food parcels went up by 180 per cent. The organisation told me that clients are increasingly turning to it as a result of benefit sanctions. People are increasingly desperate and have nowhere else to turn, yet the food bank can help them for only a few days. What happens to someone who has been sanctioned for months? How are they supposed to put food on the table, never mind pay their electricity bills, put shoes on their children’s feet and pay their bus fare to go to work or to seek work? The only choice that is left to some people is to steal or to starve.
Before Christmas, a constituent who had already had his three food parcels came to see me at my surgery. He had two packets of frozen burgers to last the week. What type of society are we living in when we allow that to happen? In 21st century Scotland and across the UK, no child should go to school with an empty belly and no mum should be choosing between heating and eating. No family should be left destitute because of a welfare system that penalises rather than supports people.
Of the 2,147 cases that Dunfermline Foodbank has dealt with since last April, 1,255 were a direct result of benefit changes or delays. A further 205 were due to low pay—people did not have the money to last the month. John Drylie, who does an excellent job of running Dunfermline Foodbank, tells me that the bedroom tax is at least a factor in almost all cases and is the sole factor in many.
Yesterday, we secured agreement on mitigating the effect of the bedroom tax in Scotland, which I hope will make a difference to families in Dunfermline and across Scotland who are struggling to make ends meet. Just as it was time yesterday for Holyrood to use the powers that we have to change people’s lives, now it is time for the UK Government to wake up and face up to the cost of living crisis that it has created. It is time to end the scandal of families in our country going hungry. The UK Government’s denial has gone on long enough. It is time for action.
I must keep members tight to their time or, I am afraid, I will not be able to call everyone.
13:14
I, too, thank Stuart McMillan for bringing today’s debate to Parliament and allowing us to discuss food banks. As he has highlighted in his speech and in the motion, the rapid growth in food banks across our country is simultaneously one of the most welcome and one of the most disturbing developments in our society. The passion with which so many members have spoken—Cara Hilton is an excellent example—shows how much the subject has touched us all.
As a demonstration of our capacity for charity, selflessness and generosity, food banks are entirely admirable. The volunteers who run them, the members of the public who donate to them and the churches and other voluntary groups that sponsor and organise them stand out as a beacon of compassion at a time when it feels as though the bile and lack of sympathy of spiteful austerity are the order of the day. When I have spoken to the volunteers at the East Renfrewshire food bank, in my constituency, or at Netherauldhouse, in James Dornan’s constituency, which I visited last week, the message has been the same: yes, they are pleased to provide the service, but they hope not to be there for too long, as they hope that there will be no need for food banks in the future.
As members will know, the Welfare Reform Committee will shortly hold an evidence session on food banks, which I hope will be able to shed some light not just on why they have sprung up in such numbers but on what the Parliament’s response should be. We are used to the concept of relative poverty in this country, but the return of food poverty in a wealthy economy and society is deeply troubling. What on earth has happened to our welfare state if we cannot ensure that everyone gets a square meal?
We certainly do not have all the answers to shape our response, but we can make a number of observations. I agree entirely with Claire Baker, who accurately listed a number of factors and centred on income—low income, in particular—as one of the main concerns. I also agree entirely with Nigel Don’s comment that very few banks are for the down and out and the homeless. According to, I think, the Trussell Trust, less than 5 per cent of those who use food banks are homeless. They are often working people with dependants. In fact, two of the women whom I met at the food bank last week drove there in their own cars. All of them, however, were struggling to get by, and most of them had suffered from the welfare reforms in one way or another. Those to whom I spoke had all heard of the food bank through word of mouth and had then been given a referral strip by the jobcentre. The staff or volunteers at the food banks go out of their way not to be judgmental or to preach, but there is an awkward relationship to navigate and the potential for stigma or shame. In our parliamentary inquiry, it will be essential to establish a clear sense of the emotions that are felt by those who use food banks, so that we can understand and learn from the experience.
Anecdotally—I do not wish to digress—I have heard that the use of benefit sanctions is a huge factor. One constituent has raised with me the possibility that benefits staff are being encouraged to meet targets for increasing the number of sanctions. That strikes me as an even more pressing issue than the bedroom tax in driving people to rely on food banks. There are clear questions for our UK Government if the DWP is referring people to food banks but is also imposing sanctions. There are clear questions, too, for the Scottish Government, as Jackie Baillie highlighted. What is the role of the Scottish welfare fund? Oxfam states:
“Oxfam’s experience in food shortage situations around the world tells us that giving out cash, not emergency food parcels, is more effective and also a far more dignified approach.”
The cost-of-living crisis is hitting us all but, as Neil Findlay powerfully pointed out, it is too simple to point to benefit cuts as being the only reason for the situation. I celebrate the benevolence and commitment of others, but there are questions for our Governments to respond to with similar compassion.
13:19
I, too, thank Stuart McMillan for bringing the debate to the chamber, and I thank the Trussell Trust for all the good work that it has done both in the food banks and around the debate.
The subject is probably one of the most schizophrenic for a politician to deal with. My local MP, Tom Harris, and I, along with local councillors, were at the launch of the Netherauldhouse food bank, and it was an event at which I felt simultaneously proud and ashamed. I felt proud of the work that the church and local volunteers were doing, the goodwill of local supermarkets, such as the local Morrisons in Newlands and others, and the people who donate food, but I felt shame that that was needed in 2013.
In 2012, I visited south-east Glasgow’s food bank on Butterbiggins Road. I have some statistics from there. In the year 2012-13, it fed 682 people. In the first three months of 2013-14, it fed 1,200. There is a huge impact locally and nationally. The national figures are staggering and some of them have been discussed already. In 2006, approximately 3,000 people used food banks in the UK; now, the number is almost 350,000. That should terrify us.
I am in a fortunate position. December is kind of the month for kids, so every December we try to get people to donate toys, which we dish out to charity from my office. Last year, having been at the launch of the Netherauldhouse food bank, we decided that we would ask people to donate toys and food and we would pass them on to the local food bank. We were overwhelmed by the generosity of constituents and the community. We managed to fill a few cars and get them up to the food bank, where the food was gratefully received and well used.
While I was talking to people at the food bank, they told me that just that morning they had fed a family of eight. As has been mentioned a number of times, people who use food banks are not people who have not worked for 10 years or are struggling to find a place to stay, but people who have an established life. Many of them will be working and many of them have families to bring up, and have been bringing them up until circumstances change and they go from having a reasonably stable life to not being able to feed their kids. How bad must that be?
Like Neil Findlay, I have been unemployed and, unfortunately, for a while I was pretty poor. I had a young family at the time and I know how difficult it was, but I was never in that kind of situation because I had a support network around me. To have to forgo your pride to make sure that your family gets fed does not bear thinking about. We as politicians have a huge task ahead of us to mitigate that.
I am not going to play party politics here; it is far too serious an issue to do that. The only thing that I will say is that councils are responsible for the Scottish welfare fund and councils are responsible for ensuring that the money is used properly. We should be wary of trying to score points on that issue—I am not even going to mention my council.
I was very impressed with Cara Hilton’s speech, which I thought was good, as were Neil Findlay’s and others’. Kezia Dugdale made a very good point about councils paying no matter what they get. I will look at whether there is any scope to ensure that, if that does happen, it is looked at.
You must conclude, please.
Okay. Once again, I thank Stuart McMillan and I thank the Trussell Trust for all their good work. Congratulations.
13:23
I add my congratulations to Stuart McMillan for securing the debate.
I joined the Labour Party at the time of the miners’ strike in the 1980s. I vividly recall collecting foodstuffs to help support striking miners and their families at that difficult time, so to find myself, 30 years later, standing at a supermarket, collecting food to be distributed to needy constituents, quite frankly appals me.
What do that time and this one have in common? It is quite simple: the Conservatives are in charge. The Conservatives are a party that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing and that seems to be insulated from the reality of the lives lived by so many of our constituents. It surely is no coincidence that the number of people relying on food banks has risen as welfare reforms bite, food and fuel prices increase, and wages are pegged. Unexpected delays in processing benefits do not help, either. Single people, pensioners, families, those who have recently come to our country and are particularly vulnerable, those without work and those with work are having to look to someone else to help to feed them and their families.
Across the country, food banks have to support more and more people every week. Even in the radio programme, “The Archers”, a recent storyline featured one of the families having to use a food bank to get by, but that was fiction and not the grim reality that faces so many across the UK and beyond.
Local police have indicated that the demographic of shoplifters has also changed significantly in the past few years, with more and more of those who are apprehended being identified as having stolen because they just cannot afford to buy food.
If the need for food banks appals me, and it does, the commitment and dedication of those who volunteer and organise food banks inspire in equal measure. In my constituency, the Greater Maryhill Foodbank is the largest and best known. Starting with a few people associated with Maryhill parish church, it has grown, and in less than nine months now has some 21 partner organisations and several outlets covering more than half of my constituency. It has organised Christmas lunches and Christmas presents for children, and it depends entirely on donations and volunteers, like so many other food banks that we have heard about today. I am pleased to say that it also has significant help from our local supermarkets, which is welcome.
I know that the volunteers who staff our food bank do it because they see need around them and because they want to help their neighbours. They do not do it for praise or for recognition, but I want to single out a few people and, through them, acknowledge all the others who help out. First there are the inimitable Deacon Jim Hamilton—if Jim did not already exist, we would have to invent him, so ubiquitous is he in the life of Maryhill—and Sheila Ramsay, the parish worker who, with Jim, sparked the idea in the first place. I should also mention Julie Hyslop, whose enthusiasm for her community knows no bounds but who has found herself working for the project on an almost full-time basis.
I mentioned that the Conservatives are responsible for much of the problem, and they are, but there are measures in place that we can pursue. I hope that, in closing, the minister will be able to say what other measures can be taken to ensure that the money that exists for the welfare fund can stop being in council coffers and be pushed out to those who need it most.
I wait and work for the day when everyone at the Greater Maryhill Foodbank is redundant because no one in our communities needs the service that it so faithfully provides. Let us hope that that day comes soon.
13:27
Like Patricia Ferguson, I recall the miners’ strike of 30 years ago and my experience of working with other colleagues in Cambuslang to organise food collections during the strike. It is an absolute scandal that, 30 years on, we see evidence of food banks all over Scotland. As the Trussell Trust’s submission says, 23,000 food parcels were issued between April and September last year. That is shameful in a modern society.
In assessing the reasons for the growth in food banks, it is clear that there is a cost-of-living crisis. We are seeing food prices increasing, incomes decreasing—as people’s incomes do not match the increases in food prices—and fuel prices rocketing. With each 5 per cent increase in fuel prices, 46,000 people are added to the fuel poverty roll. One of the primary reasons for that is the policies that are being pursued by the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition at Westminster. I regret the tone of Stuart McMillan’s comments, in which he tried to lump the Labour party in with those in the coalition who are pursuing these policies.
Like others, I pay tribute to those who operate the food bank in my area, in Rutherglen and Cambuslang. In particular, I thank Brendan Rooney and Thérèse Reid. I attended a church service in Rutherglen last night to highlight the work that is carried out by the 60 volunteers. One young man who recently presented himself at the food bank did not even have a plate or a cup, never mind a microwave or a cooker to cook the food. That shows the difficulty of the cases that food banks have to deal with, and there is a lot of excellent work being done by those in Rutherglen and Cambuslang to service that food bank.
I regret the existence of food banks throughout Scotland. We must look at what can be done to move the situation forward. It is absolutely clear that alternative policies that put people and communities first need to be pursued at the Westminster level.
The administration of the Scottish welfare fund must also be looked at. The fund is absolutely welcome, of course, but I think that every member in the chamber would agree that, where we have such funds in place, we must ensure that they get down to those who need them. I would be interested in hearing the minister explain what more the Government can do to ensure that the funds get down to needy communities and individuals.
To sum up, it is regrettable that there are so many food banks in the country. We all need to speak out loudly and clearly for an alternative approach that moves us away from their existence.
13:31
Like other members, I congratulate Stuart McMillan on securing the debate. It is clear that we feel passionately about our citizens having to turn to food banks to eat.
Everyone who has spoken in the debate, I think, has said that it is absolutely unacceptable that anyone in a country as prosperous as Scotland should have to rely on food banks and that so many of our citizens are living on inadequate incomes. That concerns all of us, of course, as is evident in the efforts that are made by the providers of food banks, the volunteers who distribute the food and work in the centres, and all the people and organisations that donate to ensure that some of our most vulnerable people get food on the table.
A number of members have mentioned that Scotland is a wealthy country. Last week, however, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published a report that said that living standards fell between 2008-09 and 2011-12, which increased the proportion of people living below the minimum income standard to 21 per cent. The report summary says:
“in 2011/12, the proportion of families below the standard rose sharply, as benefit and tax credit cuts started to kick in.”
That is a clear indication of the damaging impact of the welfare cuts that are coming from Westminster, which will, it is estimated, reduce benefits in Scotland by more than £4.5 billion in the five years to 2015.
Where is that money taken from? It is taken from the very people whom we have been talking about in this debate: workers on low incomes, families, those with long-term illnesses or disabilities, tenants in receipt of housing benefit, and people in the most vulnerable circumstances. They are precisely the people whom society should be helping, not harming. That tells me that we have a failed welfare state in the UK.
I could not agree more with the minister but, given independence, the case for which some of her back benchers have made, which of those cuts would she reverse?
I will move on. We have already said a number of things in the white paper, which I will touch on later, about how we would proceed in an independent Scotland but, for me, one thing is clear: we would have a welfare system that looks after those who need it most; that we all have a stake in; and from which we know what to expect when we need it. I might talk a bit more about that later.
I am sure that we are all aware of constituents who turn to food banks when they struggle to make ends meet. We should try to understand the issues and help as much as we can. That is why the Scottish Government commissioned research on the nature of food aid provision in Scotland, which Nigel Don referred to earlier. That research was published in December. We now understand more about the extent of emergency food aid in Scotland and that welfare and benefit changes are a major cause of the substantial increase in the use of food banks.
As members have probably heard, I met Lord Freud last week. At that meeting, I took the opportunity to give him a copy of our research and to inform him of some of the damaging impacts of the Government’s welfare reform programme on our citizens in Scotland. Meanwhile, the UK Government’s research on food banks remains unpublished by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Perhaps that is why we have no representatives of parties in the UK Government in the chamber today; clearly, they are not as concerned about food banks as others are.
We have heard a lot about the cost of living and the low incomes of many people in Scotland. Part of the contract between the people of Scotland and the Scottish Government is our defence and extension of certain core universal services, rights and benefits through the social wage. That includes increasing the provision of free nursery education; freezing council tax; paying the living wage to all staff covered by the public sector pay policy and encouraging other employers to follow our lead; and, from January, extending to families throughout the country the entitlement to free school meals for all children in primaries 1 to 3, which will be worth around £330 a year for each child who takes those meals up. We have also made efforts to mitigate some of the UK Government’s welfare reform proposals.
I am reluctant to get into party politics, but I ask the minister: who is most affected by the cuts to council services? Is it people on the lowest income or people on the highest income?
As I said earlier in the statement, we have a contract with all the people of Scotland. By freezing council tax, paying the living wage and having free prescriptions, we are helping families; we are not leaving people out. That is the contract that we have with the citizens of this country. We have made efforts to mitigate some of the worst impacts of welfare reform policies. We have provided £40 million to protect people from the 10 per cent cut in council tax benefit and £7 million for welfare mitigation. We have invested £9.2 million in the Scottish welfare fund.
A lot of questions have been raised about the Scottish welfare fund and I absolutely agree with members. The fund was set up to ensure that money got out to the people who needed it most. It is a new fund; we know that councils have never had to operate it before. As was mentioned, early on, take-up of the fund was not as we anticipated. However, as I announced in the chamber last week in answer to a question, our informal feedback from local authorities and informal statistics to December show that since we introduced easier access to the fund and changed some of the criteria, we have seen take-up rising much higher. That information has been shared with the Welfare Reform Committee and it shows that the fund will be taken up and is now being used in the way that it should be. People are not directed from the welfare fund to food banks if they would qualify for the welfare fund; it is only if they do not meet the criteria for the fund that a local authority will send them to food banks. If anyone has examples of something different happening, we need to have them.
That is about mitigation and, as I have said, we are mitigating the impact of UK Government policies in Scotland. However, mitigation is not enough. In “Scotland’s Future”, our white paper on independence, we set out why we believe that there is a better way for social security in Scotland. I appreciate that we all share the same views on food banks, but I feel strongly that the way forward for Scotland is to be an independent country and to ensure that we have a social security system in which we all have a stake—one that we contribute to when we can and, in turn, are able to access when we need to. It needs to be fair, transparent and sympathetic to the challenges faced by people, and respectful of personal dignity, equality and human rights. Benefits should not relegate those who cannot undertake paid work to a life of financial uncertainty and poverty. Welfare support needs to support a standard of living that ensures dignity and enables participation in society.
I believe passionately that independence would allow the Scottish Parliament to make decisions on welfare; reverse the most damaging of the Westminster changes; ensure that we have a system that better meets Scotland’s circumstances; and allow us to build a fairer and more prosperous country where—as everybody in this chamber agrees—we do not want to see food banks.
Before I suspend Parliament, I put on record the point that members who participate in members’ business debates should not leave the debate before the closing speeches, unless they have a pressing reason to do so, which the Presiding Officer has been notified of. Doing otherwise is discourteous to Parliament.
13:39 Meeting suspended.