Scotland publishes unambiguous report on use of food banks

Scottish government report links welfare reform to food bank growth
As the UK government report review of food aid gathers dust, an official study in Scotland is unambiguous about why more people have become reliant on food parcels


Unlike England, where the now notoriously "suppressed" Defra-commissioned review of emergency food aid still gathers dust on a Whitehall shelf nearly seven months after it was completed, Scotland has managed to publish its own, academically-researched study of the scale and causes of charity food provision.

Researched in September and launched in December, just before Christmas, the Overview of Food Aid Provision in Scotland examines the rise in food banks, the strength of the data collected by the Trussell trust food bank network, and the role of welfare reform in the growth of food charity.

Scottish Trussell trust food banks, notes the report, continue to grow in number and deliver food parcels to more people. In 2009, there was one Trussell food bank operating in Scotland; by October 2013 this had increased to 42 (with a further 17 in development). Overall, there was a 170% increase in demand in 2012-13, with benefit delays, changes and sanctions accounting for over half of referrals.

Numbers continued to rise this year: Glasgow South East food bank, for example, fed 682 people in the whole of 2012-13, but 1,200 in the first three months alone of 2013-14.

Low pay, the report found, was also driving demand for food parcels, as well as reduced working hours. Food banks reported "an alarmingly high number of children" were being fed, and one provider told the Heriott Watt University researchers that it had started to add nappies to food parcels if they were required.

The profile of food aid recipients, the study found, was changing: one food bank quoted in the report said of this relatively recent wave of hunger and poverty:

People who never had problems before are coming

The report is well worth a read to get a nuanced feel for the variety and scope of emergency food aid across Scotland (which I suspect is in many respects is not massively different from England, or Wales). I want to pick out three points in particular because of their wider relevance to the UK-wide political debate on food banks:

First, the report concludes that welfare reform is the main driver of increased demand for charity food parcels. UK government ministers continue to insist that there is no causal link between welfare reform and food bank growth. The Scottish study, however, is utterly unambiguous on this point:

Providers who participated in the study [both food banks and "soup kitchens"] were in agreement that welfare reform, benefit delays, benefit sanctions and falling incomes have been the main factors driving the recent trend observed of increased demand for food aid.

Second, the report concludes that Trussell trust data is broadly representative of wider food aid trends. UK ministers have started to try to discredit the Trussell trust. So how typical is the Trussell experience, given that no other providers collect data on a meaningful basis? The report concludes that the Trussell figures broadly reflect the dynamics of the wider food aid provider experience, even though the profile of its client base may differ from, say, that of soup kitchens:

The findings suggest that this [Trussell] data is a good indicator of general provision and demand trends experienced by other providers of food parcels. This means that there is not much need to go beyond Trussell Trust data, unless more precise data is required about the impact of welfare reform on clients of non-Trussell Trust food banks.

Third, it makes clear that while Trussell is the highest-profile food aid provider in parts of Scotland (and the only one to collect data as a matter of course), it is not always the dominant provider in an area, which suggests that Trussell figures are likely to be a understatement of the true level of food aid demand. In Glasgow, for example, Trussell is the biggest single food bank presence; but the study estimates that it accounts for just a fifth of the total number of food parcels given out in the city. The finding echoes that of last Year's Oxfam/Church Action on Poverty report on food poverty, which estimated (for much the same reasons) that 500,000 people were in receipt of food parcels in the UK, substantially more than the 350,000 recorded by Trussell trust.

So where does this leave the hidden Defra report? While that report had different terms of reference, there is no reason to believe that its findings, at least on the politically substantive issue of the impact of welfare reform on food bank demand, will be wildly dissimilar to those of the Scottish government report. The irony is that welfare link is not really news to anyone, except, it seems, UK government ministers. The only mystery is why Lord Freud and Iain Duncan-Smith believe that denying the link is still a remotely tenable position. The Defra report now has assumed a possibly unwarranted political notoriety, for which ministers only have themselves to blame.

Meanwhile, pressure for publication is growing. This week, Frank Field MP, the chair of the all party parliamentary group on hunger and food poverty, launched a parliamentary early day motion calling on the government to publish the Defra review of food aid provision. As I write, 60 MPs have signed it. You can see it here.

Field told the Guardian:

What can the government be worried about? If the review backs the government line why won't it publish it? But if it doesn't surely it's in the best interests of the government to publish and to get a new debate going which is beyond the denial of the obvious.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/patrick-butler-cuts-blog/2014/jan/16/scottish-govt-links-welfare-cuts-to-rise-in-food-banks


That is Frank Field MP who Drinky is always urging us to take notice of.

Cue the mealy mouthed replies that it's because people don't know how to manage their money   

Perhaps Drinky doesn't want to take notice of him this time, as he is saying something he doesn't like lol

Sassy wrote:Perhaps Drinky doesn't want to take notice of him this time, as he is saying something he doesn't like lol

I can't wait to read what Fartson has to say about this!  :\\:[: ::rfth:: 

Seems like he left without saying anything lol

Falls into line with the findings of the Kent County Council report doesn't it? The evidence just keeps mounting up showing the links between these welfare reforms and food banks.

It does, and probably falls in line with the Defra report, that the Tories are too scared to publish.