Potatoes are off the table with higher gas bills
Yesterday, after the Chancellor unveiled his spending review, food banks pushed back as grim figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility warned of the biggest fall in household’s disposable incomes since records began.
Richard Walker, the Managing Director of Iceland, gave a stark warning. He told the BBC that some food bank users were declining potatoes and fresh vegetables as they couldn’t afford the energy to boil them.
Food banks confirmed the extent of the “heat or eat” problem facing Britons. “We know people are skipping meals, unable to afford to run cookers and fridges and taking on debt to buy the essentials”, said Emma Revie, chief executive of the Trussell Trust, a network of food banks up and down the UK.
Sunak offered little help in his spring statement for those in the most dire need. Universal Credit will continue to go up by just 3.1 per cent this month, while inflation will be at 8 per cent. “By failing to make benefits payments realistic for the times we face, the government is risking turning the cost of living crisis into an emergency”, Revie said.
Food banks were a lifeline for a huge number of people thrown into poverty during the pandemic. But then, as now, they are only an emergency service and can’t afford to be people’s single point of access to food in the long-term.
These organisations have already committed all their stretched resources over the past two years, but demand is only going to rise. For one food bank in Hackney, November and December are their busiest month. But demand doubled in January and February this year, with 51,919kg of food parcels delivered, up from 21,983kg. There was also a 24 per cent increase in children who needed support.
“The most deprived communities in the UK are those who will be most affected”, Walker told Morning Wire
The fate of these vulnerable households will be left to the generosity of those who can afford to buy an extra pack of pasta or milk to donate as the Treasury keeps its own purse strings tightly closed.