Food vouchers show the truth behind the rhetoric of the Big Society

By Josh Fenton-Glynn

The response to the inadequate out of work benefits in this country should be to raise benefits not to, in effect, cut them – as the June budget will do. The idea that families on low incomes who happen to live in a few select areas should be forced to redeem food vouchers from charities is demeaning, offensive and worst of all utterly ineffective and exposes the paucity of thought in the Tories big idea of a “Big Society”.

The sight of someone so enraged by a newspaper article they start to bite their lip and growl is perhaps a little unedifying, and I apologise to the other customers in the Literary Cafe in Tufnell Park that they had to be subjected to it. In my defence I was reading an article in yesterday’s Guardian that suggested the Conservatives intend to allow DWP staff to hand out food vouchers to be redeemed at food banks run by the Christian charity the Trussell Trust.

I’m sure many will not think there is anything to object to in such a policy. Yet to do this – while admiting benefits are inadequate – this policy hopes that charities will step in and take over the self imposed deficiencies of the state.

One of the biggest mistakes the last government made in terms of welfare policy was to not reverse Thatcher’s disastrous policy by re-linking out of work benefits rates with wages – as the Conservatives now seem to think is good enough for pensioners but not other benefits recipients. This failure meant, between 1997 and 2009, benefits dropped against wages by £15. This will be amplified by the Conservatives’ new regime linking benefits rates with CPI inflation as opposed to RPI.

The problem with this is that, because benefits are falling far behind wages, the move from work to benefits when people lose their jobs is a greater shock economically and leads to a more chaotic lifestyle for those out of work.

So, having chosen not to pay people adequate benefits, the Tory hope is that the Trussell Trust and similar charities will take up the slack. Even aside from the indignity and humiliation of making people on benefits go to a charities for food handouts, a quick look at the relative capacity of charities and the Job Centre network will help us all see why this is piecemeal and random as a response to providing necessary support.

We are told that the Trussell Trust has 65 centres around Britain. Compare that to the 750 in the Job Centre network and the argument starts to fall apart. This means it will only be able to make a substantive difference to the lives of at best around 10% of Job Centre users in selected areas. Public transport costs already make up a high proportion of the weekly costs of people on benefits so an expensive trip to one of these 65 centres is out of the question – the rest will continue to try and get by without enough money. An unfortunate side effect would be changing the roll of Job Centre advisors, currently specialists in getting people into work, into a roll focusing on pointing people to where they can get help to mitigate woefully low benefits.

If the Conservatives were serious about social justice they would raise benefits. Evidence suggests this would make life for people trying to get into work less difficult and result in lower unemployment in the long run and more economically productive people in our economy. If the “Big Society” is creating a charity postcode lottery patronising some and leaving others on painfully low incomes, I want no part of it.