Whenever foodbank issues get raised with the Government, we hear stories from MPs and sometimes Ministers that demonstrate they are ignorant people who need to spend more time visiting the foodbanks in their communities. Two classic examples being that of Dominic Raab who in May 2017 appeared on the Victoria Derbyshire show and made the argument that people who use food banks typically do so not because of poverty but because they have an occasional “cashflow problem”. A few months later Jacob Rees-Mogg was speaking on the LBC radio in September 2017 and argued that the voluntary support given to food banks is “rather uplifting” and “shows what a compassionate country we are” but that the only reason for the rise in their use was “that people know that they are there”. He suggested that the former Labour government had failed to inform people of their existence.

However despite the exponential growth of foodbanks over the last decade which many Tories seem to have dismissed, and the impact over the last 6 weeks for families that depend on school meals to help them balance their budget, this new report published by the food foundation gives clear, uncomplicated evidence that even Dominic Raab and Jacob Rees-Mogg should not be able or allowed to ignore. The report evidences that about 3.7 million children in the UK are in families that cannot afford to follow healthy diet guidance published by government. The researchers calculated that the bottom 20 per cent of families would have to spend 42 per cent of their income, after housing costs, on food in order to eat the government’s recommended diet set out in the Eatwell Guide which is published by Public Health England (PHE), the guide suggests a balanced diet would cost £41.93 a week for an adult. The Food Foundation used this data to estimate that a family of four – two adults and two children aged 10 and 15 – would need to spend £103.17 a week to follow the Eatwell Guide – a total of £5,364 a year. The poorest 20 per cent of families, containing 3.7 million children, have household incomes of less than £15,860 a year. The richest 50 per cent of households need to spend just over a 10th (12 per cent) of disposable income after housing costs to eat a healthy diet.

So now Dominic and Jacob, please could you start to focus on how to resolve this matter rather than appearing on radio and TV and denying that the problem exists!