Yesterday during Prime Minister's Questions, David Cameron responded to a question on food banks by claiming that the use of food banks increased "ten times under Labour". When Cameron says this he is factually correct. He is being totally disingenuous, however.
Yesterday during Prime Minister’s Questions, David Cameron responded to a question by claiming that the use of food banks had increased “ten times under Labour“.
When Cameron says this he is factually correct. He is being totally disingenuous, however.
As the chart below shows, the number of people using foodbanks in 2005/06 – five years after the first one opened in Salisbury – had increased “ten times” by the time Labour left office in 2010. By more than ten times, actually; the real figure is closer to a seventeen fold increase.
What David Cameron fails to mention, however, is that whereas under the previous government the number of people using foodbanks gradually climbed over five years, under the coalition this figure has shot up dramatically – to 128,697 last year, an increase of 4,573% on the figures for 2005. (see the Trussell Trust graph below).
In terms of the number of foodbanks (as opposed to the number of people using them), the next graph below shows the rate at which they have increased in the last nine years. I don’t think it requires any further comment from me.
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38 Responses to “David Cameron is being totally disingenuous on food banks”
SadButMadLad
You have to be referred by social services, someone at the job centre, a doctor, a CAB employee, just about anyone. And the charities are actively looking for more people to hand out the vouchers. So quite easy to give a sob story and get vouchers.
OK, so you can only get 3 vouchers giving a total supply of 9 days food. But what then? Are the charities really going to turn away people who are still in trouble having given them free food for over week. Or will the claimants be told, what they should have been told at the start, cut back on unnecessary expenditure if you are really going hungry. Seriously. If you are going hungry, throw away your TV, your laptop, and buy the food that is marked for sale at the end of the aisle in the supermarket and cook in bulk to make maximum use of cheap ingredients. And if that means beans on toast for 6 days of the week, then so be it.
SadButMadLad
Just another thought. How many of the tens of thousands were double counted. Applicants for free food have three attempts at getting their food. Is that counted as one claim or three. If the later than the figures of 128,000 should be divided by 2 at the very least. When a charity is actively trying to get more organisations to hand out vouchers and whose survival is dependent on more food being given out then you will get some twisting of the figures.
SadButMadLad
Do the FAO figures take into account inflation? Doesn’t look like it. To me, they look weird shooting up so high when actual prices in the supermarket do not change anything like it. Also, it’s an international measure, not a UK based on.
It’s not just middle class and rich who benefit. They only benefit a bit. Cheap food means that the poor can also eat better quality food. They benefit a lot from cheap food. People in developing countries spend over 50% of their income on food. They are the same as our poor now.
I didn’t say that the poor throw away food. I gave a generalisation. It’s you who is stupid who can’t understand that.
Of course if you are poor then you value food more and will use it to the most, even re-using left overs. As for perpetual diet of beans on toast, god you are stupid. If you are in that state for a long period then you have some serious problems that 9 days of free food from a food bank can’t solve.
And saying that it puts a strain on the NHS is just taking the biscuit for straw-manning. If you think that you’d have health problems from eating cheap food for a short while then you are really really stupid. Sorry for calling you names, but you are stupid when you can’t see the price labels on food and see how cheap the food is compared to your income, earned or benefits.
Newsbot9
You said that what what the poor could afford – and then you launch into victim blaming. The LONG term malnutrition and starvation you’re whitewashing is pathetic.
Keep calling basic foods people can’t afford “cheap”. You’re launching a vicious attack on the poor again, spouting off your “stupid” label to ignore the truth.
No different from triple-dip denial.
SadButMadLad
I don’t attack all the poor. I attack the poor who dig themselves deeper and deeper into a hole. The state and charities provides a lot of help, but they can only do so much before you have to help yourself.
Long term malnutrition and starvation? Sorry, where is that coming from? All the charities and organisations and scientists and media are saying that we are in obesity epidemic. They are calling for the closing down of McDonalds and other fast food restaurants the problem is so bad. You can’t have it both ways.