‘Lady Porridge’ stirs it up

In the latest Tory-led attack on society’s most vulnerable, life peer Baroness Anne Jenkin claimed that poor people go hungry because they “don’t know how to cook.”

 
At the launch of a cross-party report into the causes of exploding rates of food poverty in Britain, Baroness Jenkin said, “We have lost a lot of our cookery skills. Poor people do not know how to cook.”

 
“I had a large bowl of porridge today, which cost 4p,” she added. “A large bowl of sugary cereals will cost you 25p.”

 
Baroness Jenkins’ remarks come just one day after the Lord’s refreshment committee, on which the peer sits, ditched a plan to cut costs to its champagne service. According to the Morning Star, Lords have spent a jaw-dropping £265,770 on 17,000 bottles of champagne since 2010.

 
Most shockingly of all, Baroness Jenkin’s assessment of the poor’s culinary skills came during the launch of a report, Feeding Britain, that found a very different set of reasons why rates of food poverty in Britain have sky-rocketed in recent years.

 
“It is an absolute outrage that, yet again, Tory politicians are attempting to deflect blame for rising poverty from their own austerity cuts onto their victims,” said Unite assistant general secretary Steve Turner. “Had Baroness Jenkin actually bothered to read the report, produced by a committee she herself was part of, she would know that growing food poverty is rooted in minimum wage, insecure, often zero hours jobs, unemployment, obscene rents and energy costs and vicious welfare cuts.”

 
Indeed, the report noted that, “the poor are penalised for their poverty,” and emphasised how living costs have far outstripped wages in Britain, while delays to benefits payments and “heavy-handed” Job Seekers’ Allowance sanctions have combined to create a toxic mix that fuels the nation’s poverty crisis.

 
In an attempt at damage control, Baroness Jenkin’s said she “made a mistake” but disgracefully held on to her main point saying it was still “valid” to say that “as a society we have lost our ability to cook.”

 
Never mind that for those who are struggling the most, the cost of food itself is only one in a number of anxieties in the fight for survival.

 
Exorbitant energy costs, which have increased by over 150 per cent in the past decade, means that the act of heating food alone can often be out of reach for the nation’s poorest.

 
And in the ever-growing chasm created by sharply climbing living costs, low-wage jobs and a failing social safety net destroyed by austerity, is Food Bank Britain, a trend that’s blossomed virtually overnight.

 
As UNITElive reported last month and the Feeding Britain report also noted, emergency food aid provided by food banks has increased astronomically in only the past few years.

 
Trussell Trust, which presides over Britain’s largest network of food banks, now runs a total of 420 food banks, up from only a handful a decade ago. In 2009-10, just as the Coalition government came on the scene, Trussell Trust food banks totalled only 50.

 
But despite the growing evidence that poverty in Britain is beyond the control of those who suffer from it, and lies firmly in the hands of the country’s most powerful, the Tories insist on blaming the poor.

 
Turner warned that Baroness Jenkins’ comments should not be dismissed as a mere faux pas, citing another similar Tory attack from then education secretary Michael Gove, who said the poor have only themselves to blame because they don’t know how to budget properly.

 
“Baroness Jenkin’s remarks have shown just how out of touch wealthy, patronising, elitist toffs represented within the Tory Party are with the lived experiences of millions struggling to get by,” Turner said. “This is only the latest of the countless incidents in which the ‘nasty party’ has demonstrated its utter contempt for society’s most vulnerable.

 
“No matter how much the Tories try to back-track, these aren’t just off-handed remarks—they’re reflective of a deeply ingrained political philosophy,” he added.