The Tories’ plans to slash family budgets could see two million forced to foodbanks

This week we’ve learned definitively that the Tories have a plan to hit family budgets through their £12bn of welfare cuts.

First, Labour analysis showed they are planning a £3.8bn raid on tax credits. It was then revealed that they are planning deep cuts in Child Benefit too. It couldn’t be clearer that working families can’t afford another five years of the Tories.

And even the cuts they are planning won’t be enough to meet their £12bn target for welfare cuts, meaning that disability benefits could well be in the firing line too.

We shouldn’t be surprised that the Tories are planning cuts to family and disability benefits. That’s exactly what they’ve done in this parliament, with families left £1,100 on average worse off due to the Tories’ tax and benefit changes, and hundreds of thousands of disabled people forced to pay the cruel and unfair Bedroom Tax.

Alongside low pay and insecurity, that’s left more and more people forced to rely on foodbanks, with over a million visits to Trussell Trust foodbanks in the last year.

Using data on welfare spending and food bank usage across local authorities, Dr Rachel Loopstra of Oxford University has examined the relationship between benefit cuts and foodbank demand. Her model predicts that food parcel distribution per head of population will rise by 0.16 percentage points for every 1% annual cut in benefit spending.

Extrapolating from this model of past cuts to the future, we can estimate that a further £12 billion of cuts in working age social security in the next two years would increase demand at Trussell Trust foodbanks to over two million by 2017-18.

The rise in foodbank use is a shocking indictment of the Tories’ failure to build a recovery that reaches across the country, and the risk of another five years of Tory government is clear.

Labour knows how important family benefits are to the budgets of millions of people. That’s why we’ve promised to protect Tax Credits so they rise with inflation each year. We have set out a clear plan to reduce the need to use foodbanks.

We’ll make work pay with an £8 National Minimum Wage in place by October 2019, and action to promote the Living Wage. We’ll put in place a cross-Government food strategy, ending the chaotic Tory approach. We’ll ensure that the social security system is playing its role in supporting those who need it; getting a grip on benefit delays, ending the unfair targets for sanctions in Jobcentre Plus, and ensuring hardshoip payments reach those who need them. And Labour are the only party who will abolish the Tories’ Bedroom Tax right across the country.

We now have less than a week to go before the closest election that anyone can remember.

The choice on the 7th May is clear; a Tory government who will slash family budgets and see the numbers of people relying on food banks to survive rise.

Or a Labour plan to make work pay, protect tax credits, abolish the Bedroom Tax, reduce the number of people relying on food banks and ensure the country works for working people once again.

Stephen Timms is Labour’s parliamentary candidate for East Ham and Shadow Employment Minister