{"id":4065,"date":"2015-05-05T17:22:39","date_gmt":"2015-05-05T16:22:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=4065"},"modified":"2015-05-05T17:23:32","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T16:23:32","slug":"growing-scourge-of-hunger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=4065","title":{"rendered":"Growing scourge of hunger"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Food bank use in austerity Britain has skyrocketed under the coalition government \u00e2\u20ac\u201c this is a fact widely reported in the media, as well as here on UniteLive.<\/p>\n

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Full Fact, an organisation that investigates numbers claims made by politicians and organisations, argued, however, that many news outlets had incorrectly reported<\/a> that more than 1m people now used food banks, based on Trussell Trusts\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 data.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe Trussell Trust collect their data from the vouchers used by people referred to their food banks,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 Full Fact noted. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bIf one voucher feeds a family of four people, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s four instances. If the same family visit again next week, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another fourinstances. The Trussell Trust say that on average people needed two food bank vouchers annually, so the number of people using food banks is likely to be around half of the 1.1m figure.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 
\nThe Spectator and the Telegraph recently pounced on this evidence suggesting that the Trussell Trust\u00e2\u20ac\u201dBritain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s main provider of emergency food provision\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwas deliberately exaggerating its statistics, concluding that food banks, an issue front and centre in this general election, are not as big a problem as we make them out to be.<\/p>\n

 
\nThis statistical hair-splitting, however, propagates an even more dangerous misconception \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that the growing scourge of hunger under the coalition government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s watch is nothing more than a myth.<\/p>\n

 
\nAs the Guardian noted yesterday<\/a>, there is no comprehensive data collected on food banks. Other countries\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 governments, as the British Medical Journal state<\/a>s, formally track emergency food aid provision.<\/p>\n

 
\nThis government, however, would simply rather not know.<\/p>\n

 
\nAll we have to go on is the Trussell Trust\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s data, which shows that the volume of food administered by its 445 food banks was enough to feed more than a million people, and that this volume has jumped by almost 20 per cent every year.<\/p>\n

 
\nThe data doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t account for the fact that there are an unknown number of food banks beyond Trussell Trusts\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 purview, administered by churches and various local charities \u00e2\u20ac\u201c there could be hundreds, even thousands more.<\/p>\n

 
\nThe data also doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t reveal the untold legions who, despite going hungry, feel too humiliated to resort to food banks \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a problem that the Trust has identified in previous surveys. Nor does the data tell of the numbers who can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t access food banks because there aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t any in their area.<\/p>\n

 
\nWhat this suggests is that the problem of hunger in the UK \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a problem often restricted to developing countries \u00e2\u20ac\u201c is a much more<\/em> severe problem than the Telegraph and Spectator may think, not less<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 
\nThe confusion over growing food bank demand and its root causes, however, can easily be cleared up if food bank use were officially tracked. This suggestion was made by an MPs committee \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a suggestion that the Tories summarily rejected<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 
\nLabour, on the other hand, has pledged a robust food policy that will ensure that growing food insecurity is tackled head on.<\/p>\n

 
\nIt was a pledge that shadow environment, food and rural affairs secretary Maria Eagle committed to only weeks ago. <\/a><\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bLabour will take a strategic and joined-up approach to food policy to ensure that everybody has the chance to eat safe, nutritious and affordable food, now and in the future,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 she said. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bEmergency food aid should remain just that \u00e2\u20ac\u201c food banks can never be allowed to become a permanent feature of British society.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 
\nLabour\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s policy aims to attack the root causes of increased food bank use, including putting a stop to unjust benefits sanctions, addressing benefits delays and tackling low-pay by increasing the minimum wage to \u00c2\u01418 an hour.<\/p>\n

 
\nThese root causes of skyrocketing food bank us, although repeatedly proven in various studies, including most recently by the BMJ, have been denied time and again by the coalition.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe Tories\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 attitude to the relentless rise in hunger in Britain speaks volumes for who they stand up for,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 Eagle noted.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThey refuse to accept any responsibility for it, despite the fact their policies are making it worse.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 
\nIt was sentiment recently echoed by Unite general secretary Len McCluskey.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bHow dare Iain Duncan Smith and David Cameron heartlessly brush off rising food bank use when all the evidence shows that their policies of benefit sanctions and austerity wages are why the hunger of so many now stalks our country,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he said.<\/p>\n

 
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe UK is the sixth richest country on the planet so something has gone grotesquely wrong when so many people, in and out of work, have to turn to charity to feed their children,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 McCluskey added. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bIt is no longer enough to say that we need to make hunger history \u00e2\u20ac\u201c we need to make the government that supercharged this need history once and for all.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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Food bank use in austerity Britain has skyrocketed under the coalition government \u00e2\u20ac\u201c this is a fact widely reported in the media, as well as here on UniteLive.   Full Fact, an organisation that investigates numbers claims made by politicians and organisations, argued, however, that many news outlets had incorrectly reported that more than 1m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3792,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[164,224],"wps_subtitle":"Food bank use is wrong \u00e2\u20ac\u201c whatever the figures ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4065"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4065"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4067,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4065\/revisions\/4067"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}