Hope+ Foodbank Stats Reveal Causes of Hunger in Liverpool

Posted by Guy Elsmore

The graph above shows some of the latest stats from Hope+ Foodbank, a project partnership between the two Cathedrals and the St Luke in the City Team including St Bride's, where food for up to 200 people is distributed every week.

The graph shows stats for the last quarter and excluded asylum seekers etc. The largest bar on the graph is for "benefit delay" ie people are waiting a long time to receive benefits (usually about six weeks) of all kinds. In the gap between falling ill or losing a job and the receipt of benefits, those without savings find themselves resorting to the foodbank.

The second largest group is for "benefit change". This group is essentially the same as the first, with one benefit stopped before another benefit is received (for instance someone who was ill for a long while recovers and begins looking for work again). Again, those without savings resort to the foodbank.

The third group is "benefit sanctions". This group is the group of individuals whose benefits have been stopped because they failed to comply with required activities. The intention of benefit sanctioning is to make sure that those who should be looking for work or be in training are doing so. In practice, it seems to be a rather blunt instrument, applied to more vulnerable individuals (the case of a wheel chair user unable to attend a job interview in a first floor office without a lift is not untypical).

Politicians may scratch their heads about the causes of food poverty but the numbers are fairly clear. Hunger is policy driven. The excessive delay in the payment of benefits is the result of recent changes made by the current government. Sanctions were introduced under the previous administration but were seen as a policy of extreme last resort. The widespread use against vulnerable individuals and families is new.

300 people were fed last week at St Bride's by various projects. We have not seen these levels of need for many years - this starts to resemble the situation described by the Revd James Haldane Stewart, the first Vicar of St Bride's who wrote in 1837 of the levels of food poverty in the City and of the great efforts made by the Church to feed the hungry.

We are told that the welfare budget is due to be squeezed furhter in the coming years. God help the poor. Shame on our society and the politicians it elects that there are hungry children in the world's fourth richest country.