Latest DWP poverty statistics must surely provide the ultimate wake-up call

Since the cut to Universal Credit in October 2021, data on food parcel distribution collated from members of the Independent Food Aid Network (IFAN) has consistently shown an alarming upward trend.

 "To tackle poverty and food insecurity and their impact on people’s health and the UK economy, we need to envision a society where everyone can access a Living Income and a Healthy Standard of Living for All."

Sabine Goodwin

More recently, shocking figures on the increasing need for emergency support have been combined with reports of food bank teams struggling to cope with demand as donations fall, surplus food supplies dwindle, and volunteers become burnt out and exhausted.

Independent food banks have not been alone. The largest UK-wide network of food banks, the Trussell Trust, has also seen steep rises in the numbers of people seeking their help as well as a worrying shift in food bank teams purchasing food to put together parcels because of a lack of donations.

However, alongside eye-opening evidence demonstrating that a charitable food aid response to poverty is unsustainable, soaring food bank data can only begin to tell the real story. These reports represent just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to wider food insecurity or the inability to afford food. We’ve seen this reality emerge over several years in data from the Food Standards Agency (FSA), the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Trussell Trust. The DWP’s Family Resources Survey found that as many as 86% of households reporting severe food insecurity (over the previous 30 days) from April 2021 to March 2022 did not use a food bank. The percentage of households struggling to afford food or missing meals without seeking the help of a food bank from April 2022 to March 2023 was identical.

What’s more the millions upon millions of food parcels distributed by Trussell Trust, independent, Salvation Army, school, university, and hospital food banks haven’t been able to put a dent in escalating food insecurity statistics. The harsh truth is that despite the Herculean efforts of food bank teams across the land a parcel of food can only ever temporarily alleviate hunger. Neither food banks, nor other types of charitable food aid provision, can stop hunger from happening in the first place.

Recently published Household Below Average Income data also provided Rachelle Earwaker of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) with the opportunity to share statistics on the number of individuals impacted by food insecurity. A staggering 7.2 million people were living in households experiencing food insecurity in 2022-23 – an increase of 53% on the previous year. There was an even starker increase when looking at individuals reporting severe food insecurity. There’d been a 68% increase in this cohort from 2.2 million to 3.7 million putting the Trussell Trust’s shocking data from this time into terrifying context.

These are levels of hunger on an unprecedented scale which must surely drive long-term change. Each and every one of these statistics represent the lives of individual people amongst them millions of children.  With an election looming, these devastating data sets must result in far-reaching commitments from all prospective MPs. Poverty isn’t inevitable, policies pave the way for a better future, and the priority of any government must surely be to reduce soaring levels of destitution and poverty. We could certainly make headway by introducing an Essentials Guarantee, removing the two-child limit, and making the Household Support Fund in England a permanent fixture of our social security system. But let’s face the facts - even these ground-breaking, enormous changes simply aren’t enough.

Our representatives-in-waiting should surely be aiming far higher. To tackle poverty and food insecurity and their impact on people’s health and the UK economy, we need to envision a society where everyone can access a Living Income and a Healthy Standard of Living for All. This means increasing social security payments to match the cost of living and ensuring fair wages and job security. And it means, alongside abandoning the two-child limit and ensuring permanent crisis support is available in every local authority, that poverty-inducing systems like the sanctions regime, the benefit cap, No Recourse to Public Funds status, and Universal Credit waiting times are made history.  Anything less risks the further normalisation food banks, and a wider charitable food aid response to poverty, and the continuation of the paradox that food banks are so desperate to escape from. We can, and we should, expect that anyone in our society can not only survive with dignity but also thrive; and that our prospective representatives will aspire to make plans for this happen.