Never before! Not in 25 years serving the people of Brent North, has my office seen such desperation in the emails and letters I am receiving. People are struggling to see how they can afford to pay the basics they need to stay alive — a roof over their heads and food on the table.
One man described how the utility bills were piling up and he was finding it impossible to manage his diabetes as he was only able to feed himself once a day.
Another constituent, who relies on Universal Credit to top up her extremely low pay, wrote that she could not afford to keep buying ready meals but didn’t have the money to buy a cooker so she could cook fresh food for herself.
I’m glad to say my brilliant caseworkers were able to get help for both of these people via Brent’s Resident Support Fund. But these, are just a snapshot of the thousands of heart-breaking appeals for help my office receives every week now.
Here we are in the wealthiest city, in the 6th largest economy in the world, and yet The Food Foundation tells us that nearly 10 million adults struggled to feed themselves during the past month during the past month.
Nearly 40 per cent of Brent North residents have had to cut back on food, a recent TUC mega poll revealed, with 1 in 7 people in the whole country now skipping meals or going without food.
Something is very wrong. The “mini-budget” saw mortgage rates soar to 6.5 per cent, costing the average family an EXTRA £300 a month, while wages have declined in real terms over the past 12 years and food inflation has hit 14.5 per cent. The chancellor Jeremy Hunt told the country: “Nothing is off the table.”…Except food Mr Chancellor. Except food!
My colleague Ian Byrne MP has campaigned to give everyone a human right to food. Fans Supporting Food Banks and the Right to Food Campaign are demanding a legal framework to ensure the poorest in our society don’t go hungry.
Ian and I sit together on the Select Committee that focuses on food. We recently quizzed our witness Henry Dimbleby – the restauranteur who heads the government’s National Food Strategy, and whose recommendations to ministers have been largely ignored.
Henry provided compelling evidence to support our call for universal free school meals, which surveys show most of the electorate also support. It’s an investment in our children’s and our country’s future and it’s not just me, Ian and Henry saying that.
PriceWaterhouseCoopers did a careful costing of the proposal and concluded that in terms of savings in health spending, increased productivity and improved education outcomes it would pay for itself.
Reliance on foodbanks has soared both in Brent and across the country since the first pandemic lockdown in 2020. Demand is now greater than the generosity of public food donations as households who used to donate try to save money on their own weekly shopping.
We have some tremendous initiatives in this borough, including the Brent Right to Food campaign which is working with trade unions to tackle food and fuel poverty. I speak regularly to Brent’s chief executive Carolyn Downs to discuss how we meet the challenges.
But like austerity, food insecurity is a political choice by governments, not something that “just happens”. It cannot be fixed without government taking clear responsibility. We need a legal right to food, but above all we need a change in government. One that will recognise the pain that people are going through when they can’t afford the basics of life and which will reverse these 12 years of austerity.
This article appeared in the Brent and Kilburn Times on 3 November