Johnny Mercer says food bank use not an accurate measure of poverty after reports of some military personnel relying on them
The use of food banks is a personal decision for some people and not an accurate measure of levels of poverty across the UK, the veterans minister has said.
Johnny Mercer argued that food banks remained a lifeline for “some dire cases” but that it was “not correct” to say people used them only when they had no choice.
Continue reading...One-fifth of UK population was in relative poverty after first year of pandemic, when support measures scrapped
Families including 800,000 children were forced to turn to food banks to feed themselves as poverty levels started to rise again after the first year of the pandemic, the first official figures on UK food bank use show.
The statistics came in official poverty data, which revealed that the reduction in relative poverty achieved during the first year of the Covid crisis in 2020-21 was temporary and was reversed after ministers scrapped support measures.
In-work poverty remains high – half (54%) of people in poverty lived in a household where at least one adult was in work, while more than two-thirds of children in poverty (71%) lived in working families.
Child poverty rates were much higher among black (53%) and Asian (47%) families than white families (25%). About 44% of children in single-parent families, and 36% of children living in families where someone has a disability, were in poverty.
Continue reading...Almost 90% of food banks see increased demand, as organisers fear having to cut support or turn people away
More people are depending on food banks than ever before in Britain, new figures show, as “ever-increasing” numbers of households – including pensioners, NHS staff and teachers – seek help amid the cost of living crisis.
New research by the Independent Food Aid Network (Ifan), shared with the Observer, found that almost 90% of food banks surveyed reported increased demand in December 2022 and January 2023 compared with a year earlier. Half of the 85 organisations running 154 food banks that responded said if demand rose further they would either have to cut support or turn people away.
Continue reading...Dominic Raab under increasing pressure as civil servants’ union calls for him to be suspended until bullying inquiry concludes
MPs have been told that paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland have coerced young people with drug debts to take part in rioting, PA Media reports. PA says:
A community worker gave an example of a user’s debt being reduced by £80 for doing so.
Megan Phair, coordinator of the Journey to Empowerment Programme and member of the Stop Attacks Forum, said both loyalist and dissident republican groups use the tactic to force people on to the streets.
It’s time for the prime minister to come out of hiding and face the music. The public deserves to know the truth about what he knew and when, including the full disclosure of any advice given to him by the Cabinet Office.
Continue reading...Consumer body says one in three lone parents forced to miss meals or visit food banks to make ends meet
Close to a third of single parents have resorted to skipping meals to make ends meet because of rising food costs, according to research revealing the household types worst hit by the cost of living crisis.
Three in 10 single parent households surveyed said they had missed meals as a consequence of runaway food prices. That compared with one in seven parents in couples and an overall figure of 14% in the poll by the consumer group Which?
Continue reading...Exclusive: Trussell Trust to distribute 1.3m emergency food parcels to help soaring numbers of households in need
The UK’s biggest food bank network is preparing to spend millions of pounds topping up charity food parcels this winter as it offers help to record numbers of families at risk of going hungry as a result of the cost of living crisis.
The Trussell Trust said the expenditure was needed to ensure food banks had adequate food reserves because its customary main source of food supplies – donations from the public – was failing to keep pace with rapidly increasing demand.
Continue reading...As cost of living crisis bites, 3,000 volunteers across several organisations sign letter of warning to the prime minister
Thousands of food bank volunteers will warn Liz Truss on Monday that they are having to ration provisions, as their services have become “overstretched and exhausted” because of an influx of people needing their help.
In a sign of a continuing cost of living crisis that was building even before the economic crisis that followed the government’s mini-budget, a letter signed by more than 3,000 food bank workers will be delivered to Downing Street.
Continue reading...Citizens Advice in affluent Wokingham says requests for help have nearly doubled in a year
A growing number of people in one of the most affluent areas of the country are struggling financially because of a huge spike in energy bills and the soaring cost of living, according to the chief executive of Wokingham Citizens Advice.
Many people who have been “just about managing” are now slipping into poverty and debt in Berkshire, said Jake Morrison, making him fearful for poorer regions throughout the country.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Nearly 70% of providers say they may need to turn people away or shrink the size of emergency rations
Food banks across Britain have warned of a “completely unsustainable” surge in demand that will prevent them feeding the hungriest families this winter.
Organisations representing 169 food banks told the Guardian the number of people seeking emergency help had already grown “dramatically” and predicted “bleak and disturbing” weeks ahead.
Continue reading...Thousands of staff have been left up to £500 short on payday, which has forced some to use food banks or leave bills unpaid
Asda employees are having to skip household bill payments, take out loans, and even use food banks to get through the month due to regular payroll errors that have seen some underpaid by £500 or more.
The scale of the problem emerged after the private equity-backed company admitted to members of the Scottish parliament that its external payroll firm had made nearly 11,000 errors in recent months, affecting the wages of 5,500 staff.
Continue reading...Latest updates: Conservative Lee Anderson says people just need to be shown how to cook nutritious meals that cost less
Michelle O’Neill, Sinn Féin’s leader in Northern Ireland, has criticised the DUP for refusing to commit to backing the election of a speaker for the Northern Ireland assembly. (See 11.25am.) She said:
What we need to see is the positions filled - first minister, deputy first minister, all the ministerial positions filled, and let’s get down to doing business.
I don’t think it is good enough. It is not good enough for the people here that the DUP is holding society to ransom, punishing society, preventing the establishment of a speaker and an executive to actually respond to the things people are worried about.
Continue reading...The Tories have held Wandsworth for more than four decades, but Boris Johnson’s lockdown woes and the cost of living crisis threaten to tip the balance towards Labour
In many ways, the London borough of Wandsworth is a paradigm of the modern capital. On one hand, it is a place where a teenager recently fainted from hunger in a food bank queue. And on the other, it is home to the “sky pool”, a spectacular transparent swimming pool suspended 10 storeys above ground in Nine Elms, and reserved exclusively for the development’s richest residents.
The borough is also known for its comparatively low council tax – which, its Conservative-run council boasts, is the lowest average council tax in the country. Wandsworth also claims to be the only local authority in London that is cutting its share of council tax bills.
Continue reading...Volunteers are picking leftover produce on farms to reduce waste and help food banks
“It’s like a vegetable treasure hunt,” says Jenni Duncan, 54, ankle deep in mud, looking at the rows of cauliflower plants stretching out in front of her as the Cornish drizzle gets heavier by the minute.
This field near Hayle in west Cornwall has already been harvested, but not all the produce met supermarket standards and so some was left unpicked. This is where Duncan and her team of volunteers come in, working down the rows, peeling back the leaves of plants that have been left behind, hoping to find small but perfectly formed cauliflowers still tucked deep inside.
Continue reading...In our new column, in which we make nice things happen for nice people, Khaled Wakkaa starts to turn his passion into a livelihood
In a Lebanese hospital in 2015, Khaled Wakkaa watched as his wife Dalal grew weaker. She was emaciated and jaundiced. In the two years since they had fled the Syrian civil war, they’d lived on the brink, sleeping on the street or on friends’ floors. “Me and my wife had started to die,” he says. The hospital wanted $500 for medical bills. Wakkaa left her in the waiting room and went begging at mosques and churches. Nobody would help.
Some friends posted about his situation on Facebook. Fellow Syrian refugees in Beirut started calling. “I received phone calls from people who don’t have money,” he says. “But they wanted to help me.” They gave him everything they’d managed to scrounge together: $200. At first, the hospital refused to accept the smaller amount, but relented after much pleading, and Dalal was admitted.
Continue reading...In our new column, in which we make nice things happen for nice people, we meet Marvin Birch, who turned his life around – and now spreads the community love
Marvin Birch has lived on the Kingsmead estate in Hackney his entire life. It’s never had a good reputation. There was a terrible murder of a young boy there in 1985; in 1994 a newspaper article wrote the place off as “one of the most notorious estates in east London”. But Birch has always found it a place of community. “It’s a family,” he says. “When people who don’t live on an estate come to visit they always comment on how everyone is together: ‘You can go out of your house and kids are playing.’” That’s what inspired him, as an adult, to make a difference for children growing up there today.
As a teenager, Birch, now 26, was a prisoner of geography, subject to restrictions that made the simple act of visiting a supermarket a few roads away a life-threatening gauntlet. “There were a lot of postcode wars,” he says. He couldn’t walk a mile in either direction without being targeted. At the time, a member of his family was a gang member, which put entire swathes of Hackney off limits.
Continue reading...The links between health access, income and race have never been so visible – these doctors, experts and activists see that as an opportunity for a revolution in care
Dr Ana Caskin treats underserved populations in Washington DC, in parts of the city where life expectancy is 20 years lower than it is in places that are a 20-minute train ride away. The last thing she wants when the Covid-19 pandemic finally recedes is for things to go back to “normal”.
Because for the people she treats that would mean limited access to doctors and therapists, healthy food and affordable, safe housing – the type of things that are now proven to help protect people from Covid-19.
Continue reading...Local authorities reveal devastating toll of coronavirus on households who have struggled to keep a roof over their heads
A rise in the use of food banks and an increase in family disputes requiring mediation has been seen across most of England, according to new research that uncovers the pressures on families during the Covid crisis.
Most local councils in England have also reported increased numbers of people needing help for homelessness, with warnings that many poorer households will face “disaster” unless emergency support is extended well beyond the pandemic.
Continue reading...Coaches, charity workers – and the footballer himself – reveal what drives the man who twice tackled Boris Johnson on child hunger and won
Show me the child at seven and I will show you the man, the old wisdom says. But in football terms, you never know, not really, which kids are going to make it as players at that age and which are not. Still, looking back at his memories of Marcus Rashford, Dave Horrocks, his first football coach, does remember one thing about him very clearly.
Rashford had first come along to Horrocks’s community club, Fletcher Moss Rangers, as a scrawny five-year-old. From the beginning, Horrocks recalls, he was the kid who left absolutely every atom of energy out on the pitch. Whenever the coach gave him a lift home from training, Rashford would get in the back of the car and – unlike other livewire boys – immediately fall into a deep sleep. When the car pulled up outside his house, Rashford would then jump out, refreshed, pick up a ball, and start practising some more on the patch of grass outside.
Continue reading...Vouchers and money to buy food bring families the dignity everyone deserves, as the World Food Programme has shown
Dignity is not a word that you would normally associate with your weekly supermarket shop, or with planning how you might be going to feed your children each night.
But right now, when families are under intense pressure to find enough money to keep food on the table and ensure their children have access to a healthy and nutritious diet, dignity is something we should all be demanding for those who depend on others for the means to feed their loved ones.
Continue reading...UN agency will help fund food parcels for those affected by coronavirus crisis in Southwark, south London
Unicef has launched a domestic emergency response in the UK for the first time in its more than 70-year history to help feed children hit by the Covid-19 crisis.
The UN agency, which is responsible for providing humanitarian aid to children worldwide, said the coronavirus pandemic was the most urgent crisis affecting children since the second world war.
Continue reading...