That the UN’s rapporteur on extreme poverty, along with researchers from a global human rights organisation, had to come to my home city, one of the most affluent in the world, is a source of profound shame. Now the UK government has been accused of breaching its international duty to keep people from hunger by pursuing “cruel and harmful policies” with no regard for the impact on children living in poverty.
Human Rights Watch’s researchers have been examining food poverty in Hull, Cambridge and Oxford, where I’m a councillor in a ward where hunger is affecting increasing numbers of children and families, as it is across the country.
The report is a damming indictment of the state of Britain, this government and its cruel and devastating austerity programme. That hunger is a daily lived reality for increasing numbers of children and adults, in one of the richest countries in the world should be a badge of shame and a call to take urgent action. Horrifyingly though, it feels as if hunger and poverty, like homelessness, are becoming daily more normalised as the welfare state is decimated by the government.
HRW’s dossier on hunger has been issued two days ahead of the release of the final report on poverty in the UK by Philip Alston, the UN’s rapporteur on extreme poverty. His interim findings were released in November and since then the government has been pouring cold water on Alston’s findings, denying that poverty – and specifically hunger – are now an increasing reality for more and more adults and children.
The evidence, however, is everywhere to be seen, in schools, community centres, charities and food banks across the country, including here in Oxford, one of the most affluent cities in the country.
I’m a governor at a primary school in the city, which has recently launched a breakfast club. Children line up in the morning to receive a bagel. One volunteer told me: “I know that some of the children are really hungry; they may not have eaten dinner or not had enough food to eat the night before. You can see it in their faces, they’re eager to get their hands on a piece of bread with butter on it. There is nothing fancy about the breakfast we are providing – it’s the absolute basic.”
Less than three miles from the centre of the city and the dreaming spires of Oxford, two formidable women, Fran Gardner and Aimee Winkfield, run the Rose Hill junior youth club that each week supports 180 children and young people aged from five to 15 years. Despite the wide range of fun activities on offer at the club’s four sessions, the highlight is always the hot buffet meal.
Food poverty on Rose Hill is a huge problem. Many of the children attending the club will not have access to an evening meal, so filling up on nutritious, tasty home-cooked food is vital. The club accesses up to 350kg of surplus food each week from FareShare and the Oxford Food Bank and has a kitchen team of four to cope with the demand.
Gardner, the lead worker, says: “On a weekly basis we are confronted with the fact that some of the children and young people who come to our sessions haven’t eaten at all that day. Imagine a growing child having to deal with the increasing pressures of school, bullying and home life stress, not having anything to sustain themselves throughout that day.”
Any excess surplus food that the youth club does not use for its sessions goes to struggling families and individuals in the community through the weekly food bank. Winkfield explains: “The food bank is a lifeline for many isolated people who are upset and scared because they do not have enough money to feed themselves and their families due to the detrimental effects of the universal credit system, often the sole reason for a food bank referral.’
The project’s funding runs out in 18 months’ time and Gardner and Winkfield are looking for new funding sources to ensure they can continue with the club’s vital work. They are just two community heroes; there is an army of them across the country, determined to keep children and families afloat.
The hunger campaigner Jane Middleton, founder of the newly launched Labour hunger campaign, is calling on the Labour party to adopt the organisation’s charter on hunger. This is an ambitious strategy that would eliminate food poverty under a Labour government. Although Labour’s 2017 manifesto included a promise to repeal the welfare reforms that have contributed so much to food bank use, for many activists including Middleton it doesn’t go far enough. She is calling for “a well-thought-through plan in place to tackle hunger from the first day of a Labour government” including appointing a minister for household food security to coordinate the policy response to food poverty across government departments.
She says: “The voluntary response to food poverty has been magnificent but charities cannot and should not be obliged to do the work of government. It’s vital that we have a functioning welfare safety net to prevent hunger.”
There’s a saying that it takes a village to raise a child, but in Tory Britain it increasingly takes overburdened food banks, schools, charities and youth projects to ensure children do not go to bed hungry. There is nothing inevitable or normal about hunger and poverty in a country as rich as ours. It’s an outrage that must be challenged.
• Shaista Aziz is a journalist, writer, standup comedian, Labour councillor in Oxford and former aid worker
