500,000 people in the UK are resorting to food banks because of squeezes on benefits, wage cuts and the continuing economic downturn, with numbers trebling over the past year, a report by two leading British charities has warned.<\/p>\n
\n A joint report by Oxfam and Church Action on Poverty has said
\n that despite Britain\u2019s position as one of the richest nations in
\n the world an alarmingly high number of people are now forced to
\n ask for help to feed themselves.\n <\/p>\n
The charities said that reassessment of entitlement to invalidity
\n benefits, new jobseekers allowance sanctions, and below-inflation
\n rises in payments are the biggest reason for a surge in demand in
\n food banks.\n <\/p>\n
\u201cThe single biggest reason is delays or sanctions or problems
\n with people\u2019s benefit payments. And that is tied directly to the
\n reforms and the cuts that are going on with benefits;
\n increasingly they are having sanctions where their benefits
\n
are just stopped, which are being used in a very harsh and
\n arbitrary way,\u201d<\/i> Liam Purcell, Communications Officer for
\n Church Action on Poverty, told RT.\n <\/p>\n
\u00a0As well as those on benefits, food uncertainty has been
\n exacerbated by wage cuts and falling living standards of many
\n people in employment, with many also having the hours they can
\n work cut.\n <\/p>\n
\u201cThe shocking reality is that hundreds of thousands of people
\n in the UK are turning to food aid. Cuts to social safety-nets
\n have gone too far, leading to destitution, hardship and hunger on
\n a large scale. It is unacceptable this is
\n
happening in the seventh wealthiest nation on earth,\u201d<\/i> Mark
\n Goldring, the Chief Executive of Oxfam, told reporters.\n <\/p>\n
The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the poorest people in
\n the UK pay more for food than their richer counterparts. A
\n selection of groceries was 69% more expensive in some of the
\n poorest parts of the country according to the report, a
\n reflection of the poor amount of choice in lower end groceries
\n and supermarkets.\n <\/p>\n
At least 4 million people in the UK do not have access to a
\n healthy diet, while 13 million live below the poverty line, the
\n report said.\u00a0\n <\/p>\n
A former adviser to the World Health Organization, Tim Lang, told
\n the Independent earlier this month that Britain was returning to
\n a \u201cDickensian\u201d<\/i> model of welfare. He was referring to
\n Charles Dickens, an English author from the 19th
\n
century who wrote graphically about poverty in urban Victorian
\n Britain in novels like Oliver Twist.\n <\/p>\n
The Trussel Trust, which is the biggest organizer of food banks
\n in Britain, said that last year almost 350,000 people received at
\n least three days emergency food, a 170 percent increase compared
\n to just 130,000 in 2011-2012. But because there are other
\n organizations that also dish out food handouts the Oxfam report
\n estimates that the number of people reliant on charitable food
\n donations is well over half a million.\n <\/p>\n
In 2011 and 2012 the Trussel Trust was opening two to three food
\n banks a week and that in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, a
\n poor area in East London, the working poor are also starting to
\n use food banks, explained Denise Bently, the manager of the Tower
\n Hamlets food bank.\n <\/p>\n
The trust now runs 350 food banks, manned by 30,000 volunteers,
\n with about 3 new centers opening up each week.\n <\/p>\n
But the government insists that welfare payments are in line with
\n inflation and that families can afford to feed themselves.\n <\/p>\n
Ed Davey the Energy Secretary told MPs earlier this month that it
\n was \u201ccompletely wrong to suggest there is some sort of
\n statistical link between the benefit system reforms we are making
\n and the provision of food banks.\u201d<\/i>\n <\/p>\n
The dependence on food banks is reflective of a widening chasm in
\n the UK between the rich and the poor, with inequality now higher
\n than it has been for almost eighty years, Purcell said.\n <\/p>\n
\u201cInequality in the UK is now the highest it has been since the
\n 1930\u2019s, according to the latest figures it has been growing and
\n growing under governments of all parties and there is massive
\n evidence now that inequality is bad for everyone in
\n
society.\u201d
\n
<\/i>
\n
He emphasized that the UK should not be heading in a direction
\n where charity replaces government responsibility.\n <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat most people who know about this issue will say is that
\n food banks should not replace the safety net of the welfare
\n state, that\u2019s not what they are intended for. They\u2019re meant to be
\n an emergency short term response, we can\u2019t have a situation where
\n the government is abnegating its responsibility and leaving
\n people to depend entirely on charity to be fed,\u201d<\/i> Purcell told
\n RT.\n <\/p>\n
Purcell added that one of the recommendations of the report was
\n that the government takes action on tax dodging. If the big
\n corporations and the wealthy paid their fair share of tax, then
\n there would be much less need for cuts to vital public services
\n and benefits.\n<\/p>\n