MP: 'We should not still be fighting this war on poverty - we need a legal right to food'

WITH families and children going hungry across the country, we need a legal right to food.

Almost 80 years ago, at the height of the Second World War, the Beveridge Report set out a ground-breaking plan to vanquish each of the ‘Five Giant Evils’ that plagued the country: want caused by poverty; ignorance caused by a lack of education; squalor caused by poor housing; idleness caused by a lack of jobs; and disease caused by inadequate healthcare provision. 

This report formed the foundation of the post-war settlement that delivered our NHS and the welfare state, yet whilst great strides were made in overcoming Beveridge’s evils, a decade of cruel and ideological austerity amplified by the coronavirus crisis has created a stark contrast between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ in our society and hollowed out the welfare safety net, enabling these Great Evils to return.

Whilst all now run rampant again in our society, rising prices, increasing debts, insecure employment, low incomes, welfare caps and benefit sanctions that have led to a surge in the number of households in poverty means the evil of want and poverty is now the biggest challenge faced by more and more people both in Bradford and across the country. 

Indeed, around half of children in Bradford East are growing up in poverty and there are almost 50,000 households across the Bradford district that are reliant on universal credit to help them get by because the war on poverty has failed.

As a result of this poverty in which they have been left, many households tragically struggle to make ends meet and get from one day to the next, and sadly, many are unable to even put food on the table for themselves and their families.

For them, the day-to-day struggle they face is not even about achieving a basic standard of living anymore, it is just about survival, and without food banks and charities stepping in, with the number of parcels distributed in Bradford by the Trussell Trust almost doubling to 10,000 over the last year, many would inevitably go hungry. 

In one of the world’s richest countries, what should be a human right to food is far from reality.

In the UK, in the 21st century, we should not still be fighting this war on poverty, and particularly not around something as fundamental to our very survival as food. There is simply no reason that anyone should be going hungry in this day and age, and it should certainly not be because of decisions made by their Government such as capping welfare payments, restricting statutory sick pay to an unlivable level and enforcing excessive waiting periods for support, which is why we so urgently need to enshrine a legal right to food.

Confirming in law this legal, statutory right to food would set in stone the Government’s obligation to tackle food poverty and would open legal means of recourse to hold the Government and their various bodies to account for violations that they commit which infringe on an individuals’ ability to feed themselves. It would also mean the end of cruel welfare sanctions and the abolition of the five-week wait for Universal Credit that has caused so much harm since its introduction.

Most importantly, it would also end for good the need for foodbanks, end the need for charities to plug the gaps the Government knowingly left and created, and end the piecemeal approach and failed response by the Government to tackling the food poverty that has caused so much harm to so many in Bradford.

The introduction of this legal right to food must ultimately rest with the Government and be addressed nationally, which is what I am fervently pushing Ministers to adopt, but it is also an issue that can be tackled locally too, and Bradford Council must lead the way on this.

Indeed, championing social justice is in our blood as a city, with Titus Salt’s new, clean homes and fair wages over 150 years ago, and our status as a recognised City of Sanctuary that I secured as Deputy Leader of Bradford Council, so implementing a right to food in their policies at a local level and joining my campaign for it at a national level is just the next step in this pioneering journey.

All those years ago, the aftermath of the Second World War and the promise of a better world offered by the Beveridge Report drove us to not just rebuild an old world that lay in ashes, but build a new one where everyone was to be looked after, regardless of their background.  

So, whilst we have not endured a devastating six years of total war with this pandemic, the same desire amongst people to build a better world is still there, and we can harness it to turn our attention to defeating these Great Evils once more, starting with poverty by delivering a legal right to food.