UK food banks used record 1m times in year

The news that food banks were visited a record million times last year has turned a spotlight on the nature of Britain's recovery.

It goes to the heart of a question that overhangs the general election campaign: why is a strengthening economy failing to translate into better opinion poll ratings for the Conservatives?

Not just the numbers but the trajectory of food bank use revealed in the latest statistics from the Trussell Trust are striking. People received three days' emergency food from the charity's food banks on 1,084,604 occasions in 2014-15, compared with about 913,000 the previous year.

Yet the economic statistics look good for the coalition government: the UK is growing at a healthy clip and the employment rate is at a record high. For this year and next, only the US is expected to have higher gross domestic product growth than the UK among large advanced economies, according to the latest forecasts from the International Monetary Fund.

Chris Mould, Trussell Trust chairman, said he would not expect economic growth to have "an immediate consequence" for those who sought its help. In the longer term it could ease their plight by allowing employers to pay higher wages and increase support from the benefit system, he argued.

Most trust food bank clients had suffered a "sudden, dramatic loss of income" but this was generally short term. Almost half used only a single food voucher in a year, underlining that for many economic hardship was a brief blip, rather than a permanent condition.

Almost half, however, came to the Trussell Trust because of delays or changes to their benefits, in particular sanctions that meant people sometimes lost four weeks' benefit for infringements such as failing to attend jobcentre interviews.

John Cridland, director-general of the CBI employers' organisation, also acknowledged that economic recovery had not yet made an impact on everyone. Businesses had "worked hard to preserve jobs and keep wages rising through tough times but they recognise that not everyone has felt the benefits so far".

The national minimum wage had risen faster than average earnings, he said. However, there was more that businesses and the government could do to help people into higher-skilled, higher-paid jobs.

"Supporting businesses to innovate, so productivity increases, will encourage wages to rise," Mr Cridland added.

Many of the jobs created in the past year have been low-paid, such as caring, cleaning and sales assistant roles, according to the Resolution Foundation think-tank. It says this has helped to drag down average pay.

Helen Barnard, of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said three-fifths of people who had moved from unemployment into work in the past year were paid less than the living wage, which stands at well over £1 more than the minimum wage.

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