Last week, Nelson Mandela turned 95. He once pointed out: 'Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity, it is an act of justice.'
Last week also
Carers UK highlighted that one reason a local authority had given for turning
down requests for emergency discretionary payments was that people were
spending ‘more than £3.60 a day per person on food.’ I don’t know about you but
I reckon that I would struggle to manage to do that for any more than a few
days. And an increasing number of people are being forced to do so – or worse –
week in and week out. That is a scandal.
I have friends
who are grateful to the food bank in their local neighbourhood for helping to
feed them and their families. I know others who contribute to food cupboards,
food banks and food share schemes and who volunteer within them. Their
generosity is to be applauded but the issue of food poverty requires more than
charity.
I have another
friend who told me recently that he would rather ‘crawl on his hands and knees
across broken glass’ than go to a food bank. And I have colleagues,
particularly those who have been involved in international development, who
point to what they see as similarities between some of the ways that we are
currently addressing food poverty in this country and the very worst of
paternalistic and degrading international aid.
Recently the
Poverty Truth Commission has been trying to engage directly with one group of
people whose voices to date have been significantly under-represented in the
debate about food poverty: those who struggle against it on an increasingly
regular basis. This is not, of course, a single, homogenous group and we have
heard a variety of different voices and emphases. Nonetheless there are a
number of core messages which I think are important to the current debate.
One thing we can
be clear about is that the rise of food poverty is, in very large measure, a
result of the increasing cocktail of welfare cuts combined with rising food,
fuel and housing costs. We are speaking with people who are feeling the impact
of the bedroom tax, the re-designation of benefits, the degrading – and flawed
– processes of carrying out work capability assessments (as the DWP’s own
report into ATOS Healthcare this week confirmed) and the increasing use of
draconian and inappropriate sanctions.
Food poverty, we
have heard, is not only confined to the unemployed. Job insecurity and
sub-standard working conditions, such as the lack of a living wage and the
uncertainty of zero hour contracts, mean that many have fallen into food
poverty or have so far only narrowly avoided it through dangerous short-term
solutions such as payday loans. Others find themselves living such precarious
lives because of the huge levels of personal debt that they have been
encouraged to take on and from which they feel there is no escape.
The stories of
why people are falling into food poverty need to be told. Of course these are
individual stories but there is also a collective story of societal and
government failure. And to those who would like to lay all the blame with
Westminster whilst not taking up the powers that they do have at their
disposal, we would say it is time to stop simply blaming others.
Another message
which we have heard is that those who need to turn to others for food to feed
themselves and their families are not trying to cheat the system. ‘Do you know
how desperate you need to be to be turning up begging for food?’ one person
asked me. We must not compound that humiliation by treating people as suspects.
To do so is to buy into the same set of lies that all those on benefits are
skivers and that benefit fraud is one of the primary reasons for our high
welfare budget. Let’s not do it.
Related to this
is a very practical request that those who need to use food banks are – at the
very least – given the right to choose from the food stuffs available rather
than have bundles made up for them in advance.
It makes sense
but it is also about treating one another with dignity and respect. It builds
the human relationship between the person who is asking for food and the one
who is offering it, treating both as people who matter.
We have also
encountered significant criticism of a system that seeks to limit the number of
times that people can visit a food bank. People understand the reasons why such
a measure is in place – to reduce the risk of dependency; to enable resources
to be shared; and to give a focus to trying to address the root problem. But we
know that the problems are more complex than that. For example, one group I was
a part of pointed out the inconsistency of someone being sanctioned for a month
but only being allowed to visit the food bank three times within that period!
The people we
have spoken to don’t want to be exclusively on the receiving side of the
relationship. They want to be able to support others as well as to help
themselves. If there is one lesson which the Poverty Truth Commission has
learnt again and again over the last four years it is that people experiencing
the struggle against poverty have a vast amount to contribute to the
development, delivery and effectiveness of efforts to overcome it. This is as
true in the sphere of food poverty as in any other part of the problem.
The practical
comments which we have heard will, we hope, help to inform the many people who
are engaged in tackling food poverty in our communities. Certainly I hope that
they will help to inform my own practice and the organisations and people I
work alongside. They can help us to do charity better, more effectively and
with greater dignity for all concerned. But I also hope that deep listening
will move us more deeply. ‘Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity, it
is an act of justice.’
