What do you think was Iain Duncan Smith’s reaction to the Trussell Trust charity campaigning on the issue of the food banks they organise throughout the land? Sympathy, perhaps? An acknowledgement that the government in general and his department, DWP, in particular might in some way be responsible for the growth in their use? An offer to meet up with them, maybe, to look at why over a million people were forced to use them in the last year and look at ways of ending the need for having food banks in the first place? The answer, of course, was none of the above. Instead, Duncan Smith threatened the Trussell Trust, through one of his officials, that he’d shut them down. Would you really have expected anything else?
It is not without reason that Duncan Smith is regarded by many was being the most odious man in politics. This is no small feat given the current level of competition these days and it’s certainly not confined to the Tory Party or even parliament. Just when you thought he couldn’t be any nastier, he gets nastier.
The scourge of the seriously disabled and the terminally ill, many of whom went to their graves without having their “special rules” benefit claims sorted out, the man who has attached the unemployed viciously with a sanctions regime that should never have been tolerated in a civilised society and now he wants to deal with the issue of food poverty by getting rid of a charity that provides food to those who otherwise might starve.
Of the million people who needed help from a food bank last year, 400,000 were children. These are not so-called scroungers and skivers, these are usually the working poor. But even the non working poor who need help are apparently undeserving of it. There are many thousands of people who are so poor they often go without heating and hot water in the winter, sick and disabled people who simply cannot work, even though most of them want to. These are not the undeserving poor. These are people who need help.
Have you ever been to a food bank? I have and it’s unbearably sad, at times. Of those who needed help, I met no one who relished being there. Some were embarrassed, others felt humiliated. There were even a few tears of joy as people realised they would have a box of food with which they could feed their family for a short while. The Daily Mail tried to discredit food banks, pretending they were full of people who didn’t really need to be there. I never saw one person like that.
Duncan Smith has always refused to meet those who run food banks and instead attacks the Trussell Trust for “scaremongering”. He thinks they’re unnecessary and so it’s pointless engaging with them.
David Cameron has promised unlimited free money for the floods crisis, saying his government will give “whatever it takes” to rectify the system. He has seen, belatedly, that the current crisis, partly of his own making with the huge cuts in floods spending on which watch, could be his Poll Tax. The pictures are all over the nightly news, he cannot escape from it and he cannot get away with doing nothing.
Food poverty affects many more people than floods, but it rarely appears on the TV news and hardly ever in the newspapers which are almost uniformly in Duncan Smith’s camp. Cameron wagers that not enough people are bothered about the use of food banks and, in Duncan Smith’s case, there are those who feel confident enough to even attack their very being as a way of denigrating groups like the Trussell Trust. He could be right about that.
I won’t forget people who use food banks. I am satisfied than if there is abuse, it’s very minor. We are not talking about people walking out with hampers from Fortnum and Mason, but boxes of “basic” and “value” items.
Duncan Smith and co are either in denial or they just don’t care. In his case, I am as sure as I can be that it’s the latter. He has, after all, plenty of form.
