http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/demand-for-food-banks-has-nothing-to-do-with-benefits-squeeze-says-lord-freud-8684005.html
Demand for food banks ‘has nothing to do with benefits squeeze.
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| David Anthony Freud, now Baron Freud |
David Anthony Freud, born 24th June 1950, now Baron Freud, is a wealthy Conservative Peer who throughout his privileged life has had little contact with the real world. He will feel very much at home with the other "rich toffs" of the
ConDem coalition, who currently make up this wretched government. To
suggest, as Freud has done, that the increase in the numbers of people
using foodbanks is not linked to benefit cuts, sanctions or delays, is a
gross distortion of reality. Moreover, it is a patronising insult to
over 500,000 people who are currently reliant on foodbank charities, the
hundreds of volunteers around the country who organise and run these
facilities, and the thousands of ordinary people who make contributions
of food at numerous collection points.
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| The King's Centre Food Bank and Tesco in Honiton unveil a new collection point |
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| Nuneaton Foodbank. |
There are no doubt some
people who are by dubious means, able to obtain a referral to a foodbank
and thereby abuse the facility, but these are a small minority of the
total. In December of 2012, it was predicted that this year, 2013,
foodbanks would be feeding some 200,000 people, double the number of
2012. It is now just six months into 2013, and the figure is more than
500,000, more than half a million people who are today reliant to some
extent or other on the provision of charity food distributed though
foodbanks around the country. Many of these 500,000 are in fact
working people who have had their tax or other credits reduced others
are benefit claimants who have had cuts in their benefit amounts or have
had new demands placed upon their already limited disposable income,
such as the so called "bedroom tax".
Freud of course, with his 12
bedrooms in two mansions, would have no grasp of the effects that this
single reduction in income would have on many ordinary people.
Freud,
like many in this government, speak in cliched generalisations, with
little if any understanding of the fragmentation of society that their
policies cause and their comments compound.
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