The latest Trussell Trust report finds that low income and benefits issues are the overwhelming factors driving people in the South East, and across the UK, to rely on emergency food parcels.
The report comes just a day after figures showed that there are now 1.8 million Brits relying on precarious, low-paid zero-hours contracts, a rise of 100,000 since 2017.
The findings of my own foodbank report released earlier this year, Escalating Hunger in the South East, revealed a 20 per cent increase in foodbank usage across the region in 2017.
The Trussell Trust’s analysis of foodbank users in its accompanying “Left Behind” report finds Universal Credit and the failure of benefits to keep pace with the rising costs of everyday essentials, such as food, are the main reasons why more and more people find themselves turning to foodbanks.
I believe the Government can no longer deny the hugely harmful effects, exacerbated by the inflationary impacts of its shambolic approach to Brexit, of both its disastrous rollout of a Universal Credit benefits shake-up that is seeing the most vulnerable in our society forced to survive on less and less.
Foodbanks are a lifeline to those in desperate need across the South East but, at the same time, they continue to be a stain on this Government’s record on poverty and inequality.
Some will say that poverty is inevitable, no matter what you do.
Greens reject this. For us, poverty is political and its elimination will always be a top priority.
Keith Taylor is Green MP for the South East
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