Labour Hunger Campaign: We must do more to tackle food poverty

Last week, a teacher came to the food bank where I volunteer. Distressed that she couldn’t feed herself and her disabled child, she broke down sobbing. So many of our clients feel like this. We try to help restore a little of their dignity, but it’s tough when they have been through a welfare system that systematically strips them of their self-worth. Food banks are a last resort for the desperate. In my five years of volunteering, I have never met anyone who wanted to be there.

We are living in extraordinary times. I never expected to spend two hours a week doling out donated tins and packets of food to hungry teachers – or to anyone, in fact. I never expected an undercurrent of destitution to be running through our communities, with stories emerging of people forced to choose between paying the rent and paying for food, and children going to school hungry. But the most extraordinary thing about this epidemic of hunger, in a land with no shortage of food, is that the government pretends it isn’t happening.

When Philip Alston, the UN rapporteur on extreme poverty, produced a report that accused the government of having “systematically and starkly eroded” the social safety net, a DWP spokesperson rejected it as a “completely inaccurate picture”. British politics, as Leo Varadkar commented after Theresa May’s resignation, will be “consumed by Brexit for a very long time”, making it easier for issues that government would prefer not to confront to stay in the dark.

We need to bring the full extent of food poverty into the light, so we can turn to the urgent task of feeding hungry people. At the same time, we must campaign for political change to prevent it ever happening again. That is why I have set up the Labour Hunger Campaign with other activists. Although the Labour Party is committed to fighting poverty and inequality, it has fallen short when it comes to specific measures to tackle hunger. There were no pledges on food poverty in its 2015 and 2017 manifestos. Instead, it has used food banks as a proxy for poverty in general. We believe the party can and should do more to stand in solidarity with those experiencing food poverty and the organisations working to put an end to it.

“Food poverty is just poverty,” I have been told repeatedly. “Let’s deal with all types of poverty instead of dividing them up.” Yes, indeed. It’s essential that a Labour government tackle the structural causes of poverty, from rising food prices to the shortage of affordable housing. But this will take time, and people without food cannot wait for long-term political solutions. Once you reach the stage where you cannot feed yourself or your children, you have been through most other manifestations of poverty and are at rock bottom. Food poverty disproportionately affects the most vulnerable – children, the disabled, the long-term sick – and it’s vital that we act fast to protect them. And food poverty is a breach of our human rights, with the right to food protected under the UN’s Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Labour has rightly committed to repeal the aspects of welfare reform that have contributed so greatly to the rise in food poverty, but it needs to go much further. The Labour Hunger Campaign has produced an ambitious strategy to eliminate food poverty when Labour is next in government. Its Charter on Hunger includes:

• The implementation of an emergency plan to provide immediate hunger relief from the first day of a Labour government.
• The appointment of a minister for household food security to ensure that government fulfils the right to food and to coordinate a cross-departmental policy response to food poverty.
• A legal definition of household food insecurity, with government targets to eliminate it.
• Universal free school meals for primary-school children and an increase in the free school meals allowance in secondary schools to at least £4 per day.
• A statutory responsibility for the DWP to prevent destitution, including a duty to seek out those at risk and provide appropriate support.
• A campaign to remove the stigma around claiming benefits – one that promotes a positive vision of the welfare state and the fact that we all benefit from state support, be it parental leave, healthcare, pensions or education.

If you would like Labour to adopt the Charter on Hunger, please sign our open letter and propose our model motion at your next CLP meeting. We want a Britain where nobody needs to go hungry. Only the Labour Party can make that happen.