'We can’t be afraid of dreaming': A national food bank coordinator on why poverty isn't higher up the UK election agenda
Sabine Goodwin talks about how the media has handled the 'cost of living crisis,' and why poverty isn't a focus of the UK election campaign
Since the UK general election was called on 22 May, I have been struck by how little escalating poverty and the cost of living crisis has featured in the campaigns of both major parties. In November last year, the UN’s special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Olivier De Schutter, said on a visit to Britain that it’s ‘simply not acceptable that we have more than a fifth of the population in a rich country such as the UK at risk of poverty today.’ The Trussell Trust, which runs a network of over 1,200 food banks, distributed 3.1 million food parcels over the past year—a 4 percent rise on the previous year, and a 94 percent jump on five years ago. Even in 2018, a UN report on UK poverty warned that ‘much of the glue that has held British society together since the Second World War has been deliberately removed and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos,’ in austerity policies ‘pursued more as an ideological than an economic agenda,’ special rapporteur Philip Alston wrote.
But when Labour leader Keir Starmer launched the party’s manifesto last week, he referenced the cost of living crisis just twice. He mentioned growth sixteen times. (As for prime minister Rishi Sunak, when he launched the Conservative manifesto, he didn’t mention the cost of living crisis at all.) Starmer, who is riding high in the polls and looks set to become the country’s next leader, has been criticized for making Labour’s election slogan ‘Change’ but appearing reticent to outline what that change might be. As well as sketchiness on what he wants to change to, Starmer’s also been reticent on what he wants to change from. As Alston told me a few years ago, the UK has become ‘a laboratory for neoliberal economic approaches to welfare.’ ‘The food bank is the perfect indicator of failed government policies,’ he said. This isn’t the kind of rhetoric being heard on the leader of the opposition’s campaign stops.
I wanted to learn more about how entrenched poverty is impacting communities across the UK, and why it doesn’t seem to be higher up the political agenda. So I called Sabine Goodwin, the coordinator of the Independent Food Aid Network (Ifan), a network of over 550 food banks. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
JB: Can you explain what Ifan does and what makes it different from other food bank networks?
SG: So Ifan is there to advocate on behalf of a range of grassroots organizations that are providing food aid. Most of our members are food banks, independent food banks, but we do have other types of food aid providers in our membership. We also support their work in the here and now. Our central objective and vision is around ending the need for charitable food aid. And we’ll do this by advocating for what we call a cash-first or income-focused approach to food insecurity. That means calling for systemic changes at every opportunity to ensure that people, whoever they are, are able to access the income that they need to live well. That means through social security payments or through wages. But it also means this cash-first approach to food insecurity that we’re trying to embed income focus solutions along the way.
So at a local level, we’re trying to encourage local authorities to provide crisis support, for example, by means of cash payments. We’re trying to encourage food banks, whether they’re our members or not, to support people with perhaps vouchers or even cash payments or ways that aren’t as traditional. Ifan actually started based on learning from Canada, where the history of food insecurity and food banks is much longer.
When we first met, in January 2020, you gave me a stack of books on the institutionalization of food banks in North America, where charity has become an entrenched part of public life. It’s mixed with food waste reduction, in a way of keeping people without enough income fed. And you warned at the time that this was being replicated in the UK. Four years on from that conversation, how do you see institutionalization of food banks in the UK today?
Well, I see it happening before our eyes. I wonder if it’s not happening in quite the same way as it would have done if campaigners and journalists like yourself hadn’t been pointing out how important it was that we don’t stumble down this route. I do think the warnings are strong for not replicating the [North America] situation, and there’s been significant advocacy from the Trussell Trust and Ifan and others to not just normalize food banks being the charitable response to people’s lack of income.
What’s been really challenging in terms of contesting this normalization has been the fact that poverty levels have got so much worse, and rapidly so. When we first met, the pandemic hadn’t started and I was very forceful at the time about the poverty crisis that was underway and the number of food parcels that had been distributed. But who would have imagined that the scale of the disaster would have grown to the extent it has? Although there’s been some good messages that have been taking hold, and some significant ground covered in terms of people’s understanding of why income-focused solutions are the ultimate answer, we are treading water a lot of the time because of the scale of poverty and severe food insecurity.
The last ten, fifteen years have repeatedly seen the charts smashing through the ceiling on food bank use year-on-year. Recent data is showing fourteen percent of people in the UK are food insecure, over 11 million people. Is this moment, with the cost of living crisis, the bleakest you’ve ever seen things?
Absolutely, no doubt about that. There are some signs that things are shifting a little bit—in the direction of a slight reduction in levels of food insecurity. But what’s really important now is talking about how, even if it gets slightly better, it’s got a hell of a lot worse than 2019. This notion that the cost of living crisis is ‘over’! It might slightly reduce, but the cost of living crisis came on top of an enormous problem that pre-existed the pandemic. That problem is not going to go away. What we need to focus on is the reasons for the poverty crisis. Of course, there were the austerity policies, but there’s more to it. The danger of the label ‘cost of living crisis’ is that people think that, if it dissipates, everything will be okay. And that’s not the case.
I wanted to hear your thoughts on that, actually, on the media framing. Because the ‘cost of living crisis’ has become very common in the British media. And when it began circulating in 2021 and 2022, I felt a little discomforted. Because it seemed to imply this was a ‘crisis’ or ‘storm’ to be weathered, and then things would go back to normal. But we both know that for millions of households this was a catastrophe with very deep roots, created over a decade or more. But there was research by King's College London last October, which found sixty-four percent of people use the term to mean a ‘longer-term decline in living standards.’ So I think I’ve changed my mind about that term—I think there are uses for it, and it helps speak to something bigger than just the current moment. What are your thoughts on that framing?
Well, I don’t think it was helpful in the first place not to provide context. Too often there wasn’t context provided to the cost of living crisis. But you could argue that it gets people thinking—what do you need to live? What does it mean to live well? How do you afford to live well? People started to think about the cost of surviving. I remember one of [Ifan’s] food bank managers talking about how it’s actually the ‘cost of surviving crisis’ for people who are already struggling with poverty. The ‘cost of living crisis’ term is here to stay, so we need to make the best of it. It’s about finding ways for people to understand that struggling can happen to anyone. There’s something about the universality of the term which, maybe, is helpful. So the ‘cost of living crisis,’ and the way it’s been portrayed, has maybe drawn everyone into the storm in a way that perhaps encourages people to be empathetic.
As a former journalist yourself, what do you make broadly of the UK media’s coverage of poverty and inequality?
Things are changing for the better, bit by bit. The Changing Realities project [a University of York and Child Poverty Action Group initiative documenting the experiences of over one-hundred low-income parents and carers] has made a huge impact on people’s understanding of poverty. It’s normalized people speaking from their experience, without being contrived or tokenistic. It’s an amazing project. People with Changing Realities are now speaking on the BBC, newspapers, all over the place. When journalists get in touch with Ifan, I tell them, ‘Go straight to Changing Realities.’ Because people have the support to participate that allows them to truly be themselves, and feel they can represent their views accurately.
Whereas otherwise, sometimes it could be quite an uneasy situation. I hated asking our food bank managers to connect [food bank users to journalists]. Because it felt like burdening them with a responsibility, of facilitating a connection that was right for people with that lived experience. We need to hear from people as much as possible. But we need to make sure that happens in a way that’s appropriate and supported.
We’ve had the cost of living crisis in the media crosshairs for the past few years. How do you think the UK media has done on that task?
I would say that there hasn’t been enough journalism that tackles: how did this all come about? I’d like to see people’s testimonies linked up with strong arguments and evidence on solutions, on root causes, and connect that to how things could be different. Perhaps more direct statistics on the policies that have created these problems. And outlining policies that can address these problems. It’s almost as if sometimes journalists shy away from the whole picture, because of the enormity of it, and perhaps because they’re afraid they won’t be taken seriously.
But we can’t afford not to think about the long term. We can’t afford to be afraid of dreaming. If we dream a better future is possible, then it will be. I just feel there’s too much caution, and caution from campaigners. Perhaps that’s pragmatism. But we need to talk about a world where everyone can manage. Of course we need to be asking for an ‘Essentials Guarantee’ and the end to the two-child limit [two welfare policies that a raft of charitable organizations including the Trussell Trust food bank network, are campaigning for, to ensure social security matches the cost of living] in the immediate term. But we shouldn’t be afraid of talking about a future—that’s within our reach—where everyone can manage. Big dreams, maybe. But if we can show how we got into this mess, surely we can map ourselves out of it.
Coming to the question of choice and dignity, it strikes me that the cash-first approach [which aims to avoid people using food banks in the first place by giving people who have crashed into poverty cash payments] is trying to get around a sort of moralism and paternalism that seems to be inherent in some approaches to poverty reduction, and certainly in government rhetoric. Recently we’ve seen the prime minister taking a moralistic tone against people on disability welfare, even though people with disabilities make up nearly half of the most-deprived working-age adults in the UK at the moment. Do you think the press adopts that moralist and paternalist tone?
I think the press can get caught up with sentiments. For instance, the ‘feel good factor’ has been very much part of the food banking story. We try to challenge that. People don’t need to take food to food banks [to help]. They can give money—so food banks can make choices of what’s right for people, and they can give out cash payments so people can get the food that suits them best. With the massive appeals [for food] that have happened over time, and with the growth of food banks, the media have got caught up in these narratives. They’ve not questioned why people have to support people through food that the giver chooses, rather than the person who’s eating the food choosing. There are a lot more questions that need to be asked. Nowadays, it’s hard to get a story in the media about food banks. Because there are so many of them. It’s so important that journalists broaden the story into what’s causing this.
What about yourself? You were a journalist who crossed the threshold to become coordinator of Ifan. Did you feel any discomfort with that? How does it feel to be more a player than a stenographer?
I feel quite fortunate to be able to write as a campaigner and try my best to highlight the facts, to set the agenda in the hope that it will be picked up. At Ifan we are keen to spell it out for the long term. That means sometimes pointing out things that don’t necessarily go down very well in the mainstream of campaigning. One thing I’ve written about quite a bit is the conflation of food surplus, the food-waste problem, with the food poverty problem. [Goodwin wrote recently: ‘The idea of “repurposing” food surplus for social good is certainly alluring’ but is ‘counterproductive’—it ‘hides the real reasons behind poverty and hunger in the UK.’]
This is something that people find really challenging to get their heads around. Because it seems like such a neat way to solve both problems, but we’ve been pretty vociferous on this point. King Charles supported a whole project back in November where he talked about the ‘neat’ answer of putting the two problems together. Now, the fashionable version of food banks are ‘baby banks,’ or there’s mention of ‘multibanks’ by Gordon Brown. It feels really important that we call those baby banks and multibanks out for what they are, which is literally food banks in disguise.
Even with the UK suffering a brutal cost of living crisis, inflation rising to forty-year-highs, nearly four-million people experiencing destitution in 2022, it doesn't feel to me like poverty or food banks will play a central role in the general election campaign, which I think is a big mistake. What do you think journalists, campaigners and voters can do to make sure people are thinking about food banks when they cast their ballots?
It’s really important that journalists talk about what’s happening in a different way, to grab people’s attention. It’s very important to focus on what severe food insecurity means. Most people who are struggling with severe food insecurity—not being able to afford to put food on the table, skipping meals—will not access the help of the food bank. DWP [Department for Work and Pensions] data from the family resources survey shows that 86 percent of households reporting severe food insecurity did not access a food bank. So it’s not just that we need people to focus on the figures, we need people to focus on what are the struggles for people who cannot afford food. We need to widen the focus.
I think food insecurity, as a term, is becoming much more frequently used. Which is welcome, that we should be thinking about it as an element of poverty. The fact that it’s not going to be central to the upcoming election is so unbelievably shocking, and such a disappointment. To be fair, it shouldn’t be an issue, it should be a given that people are able to afford to live a decent life, to be able to afford the essentials. You could argue that it’s beyond politics. But we’re in a place where it seems acceptable to not even discuss what’s going on. And it’s appalling that we can’t expect, at the very least, a decision on the two-child [welfare] limit from an incoming Labour government at this point.
I think journalists could get behind calling out short-termism—which has become the normal way for politicians to exist. You know, [they seem to say] whatever will get them elected, whatever will see them through the next few weeks. which is ultimately so damaging for society as a whole. This needs to be called out. And this is where journalists can play such a key role. Saying the things that politicians seem incapable of taking responsibility for, in terms of the long-term impact of all this.🗨️
In other news…
The paperback copy of Broke is out on 20 June, featuring a new chapter from Tom Clark on why falling inflation isn't easing people's difficulties. You can preorder yourself a copy here, and the publisher has reduced the price to £4.99 until the UK election on 4 July. All royalties are donated to Leeds Asylum Seekers’ Support Network.
Tom’s powerful new section was excerpted in The Guardian this week. You can read it here.