Yesterday we heard some apparently conflicting news. Foodbank use is up by 30% and Unemployment is down to below 7%. The opposition parties were almost silent about the latter but the Government was equally silent about the former. The two things sound as though the come from separate worlds. One part of the explanation is that many who are working are on low incomes and struggling to feed themselves or their families, so that if an unexpected bill arrives, they may need to take advantage of a foodbank. However, the reality is that there is no conflict at all. Most economists agree that full employment (ie 0% unemployment) is unachievable. Whilst the figure of below 7% unemployment is seen as a point at which interest rates could be increased by the Bank of England, it represents around 2M people without work. Along with these 2M unemployed people, there might be any number of children or teenagers who are in education or under school age. The fact that our foodbanks have seen some 1M people this year suggests that there are potentially another 1M-3M whose lives are pretty desperate but who have not chosen to visit a foodbank. It is entirely possible that next year, even if unemployment is down to say 5% which would be a significant achievement by any standards, that there could be a further 30% increase in the use of foodbanks as the impacts of welfare reform continue to bite. This means that our Government which of course is right to promote the good news that employment is increasing, will need to take seriously the views of the 500 Church Leaders and myself and many others who believe that simply ignoring the demand on foodbanks as the Government appears to do, is unsustainable.

Finding solutions to intractable problems is always a challenge. However the House of Lords has come up with one relatively simple one in the last few days. In one of their Committees they have proposed giving incentives to Supermarkets to sort their waste food, and send all of the edible food to organisations such as FareShare, rather than to Anerobic Digestors. In this article which reports on this proposal they refer to foodbanks, but in reality most of the edible food that is treated as waste food from Supermarkets has already past its sell by date. This means it needs to be dealt with by charities able to get the food onto peoples plates very quickly, and this is where FareShare comes in. I founded the FareShare scheme based in Brighton that supports charities in Sussex nearly 15 years ago. Last year we distributed around 400 tonnes of food to help feed people who might otherwise not have had the chance to eat a hot meal. That improves the health of these people and reduces demand and cost on other parts of the State. The food was cooked by charities set up to provide hot meals for people who are living on the Streets of places such as Brighton, it was used in breakfast clubs for children who might otherwise struggle to concentrate in their lessons, it was used in womens refuges to help sustain very vulnerable families and it went to lunch clubs for retired people who are no longer able to cook for themselves. We could distribute much more food if it was available. A by-product of the scheme is it provides supportive volunteering opportunities for many people who might otherwise find it hard to find things to do with their time due to their own needs, and it has helped some of them to find full time work.

Of course the easiest thing for a Supermarket to do is to send all of the food they cannot sell to Anaerobic Digesters, it demands no sorting, and the cost is minimal. However if as the article suggests there is 15M tonnes of food going to waste in the UK via Retailers and Wholesalers each year, even assuming 99% of this is no longer edible, 150,ooo tonnes could be re-used each year. This would enable 375 schemes the size of Brighton & Hove FareShare to operate at its current capacity. This would demand a step change in the way we operate our scheme and the other 15 or so FareShare schemes around the country, most of which are currently smaller than ours to gear up to greater food supplies. We estimate we could cope with 600 tonnes a year on our current model, and we could change the model of operation if the food was available. It would demand the opening up of new schemes in other parts of the country. There would of course be some cost, our scheme costs around £150,000 per year to operate, all of which demands funds to be raised. However it is a scheme that itself provides full time work for several people, all of the costs are spent on equipment or people necessary to ensure the scheme runs effectively There is no waste apart from around 1% of inedible food we have to compost or send to anerobic digestion ourselves.

If you want to see the scheme for yourselves, contact the project on 01273 671111 and arrange to visit it, or visit the website and maybe even donate some money to help us. It will help you to understand why the proposal made in the House of Lords a few days ago makes so much sense. We need some more simple ideas like that from Parliament!