David Cameron is being totally disingenuous on food banks

Good Society

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.

Foodbank numbers

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38 Responses to “David Cameron is being totally disingenuous on food banks”

  1. SadButMadLad

    Thank you for proving that the numbers are over counted. One person claims, one person is counted. The same person clams, the same person is counted again. No ambiguity.

  2. Newsbot9

    Right, so I shouldn’t argue with you in your rules. Got it.

  3. Newsbot9

    You’re reading what you want into this, to justify your attacks on the poor. It wasn’t unclear, you’re a liar and bigot.

  4. SadButMadLad

    Warfare. Murderous. Vicious. Some seriously bad words there. When you can’t argue back and start using pure emotion then you’ve lost the argument.

  5. Newsbot9

    Yes. And they all apply to you. And right, you’ve lost the argument because you’ve resorted to pure emotion in your war on the poor. Can’t allow them to eat in your world, after all.

    (That’s not emotion – it’s a statement of fact based on your agenda)

Comments are closed.