Manchester Central Foodbank has today sent a letter to the Chancellor Rishi Sunak setting out its experience of rising food insecurity in the city, asking him to commit to “Keeping the Lifeline”.
The food bank urges the Chancellor not to cut £1,040 per year from the incomes of over 330,000 households in Greater Manchester by removing the current uplift of £20 per week on Universal Credit and Working Tax Credits and asks him to extend the uplift to recipients of Employment and Support Allowance, Income Support, and Job Seekers Allowance.
Manchester Central Foodbank is joining 50 national charities including the Trussell Trust, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Barnado’s, Citizens Advice, Oxfam, and Scope in this campaign, in order to raise directly with him the unprecedented demand for foodbank support they have witnessed in Manchester.
Since the coronavirus lockdown began on 23rd March, the food bank has given out 3-day food parcels to over 4,700 people in the city, which is three times the amount distributed in the same period last year.
This rise is despite the £20 per week uplift to Universal Credit and Working Tax Credits put in place by the Chancellor in April, which has been received by, and would be removed from, 46% (and rising) of working age households in the constituencies they support.
Assistant Manager Freya Lightfoot explains the impact of the huge rise in need: “Our shed looks healthy and full when we’ve collected donations, but by the end of the week, when we’ve given out between 100 and 200 parcels, the hundreds of tins we had at the start of the week isn’t sufficient to feed the number of people experiencing food poverty in Manchester”.
Project Manager Lauren Tunnicliffe states: “We have only been able to get through this crisis thanks to our community of volunteers and donors, but we don’t know whether our foodbank would survive the demand that we would expect should the £20 uplift be dropped”.
While in previous years many people have accessed the foodbank because of a specific emergency or crisis in finances, or a cut or delay to benefits, 44% of users since the lockdown have stated that generally low or insufficient income is the main reason they have turned to the foodbank for support.
As Project Manager Lauren Tunnicliffe explains: “We know that foodbanks are not the solution to food poverty. A lack of food is not the problem – people use foodbanks because they don’t have enough money.”
The letter includes testimonies from a number of people who have used foodbanks, explaining how the impact of Covid-19 on our local economy has left thousands unable to meet their usual outgoings:
“[I have] worked all my life but now on a zero-hour contract and am not receiving enough hours of work: one hour in three weeks! I’ve raised my kids but now I need help”
“[I am] still working but less working hours given – after paying some bills there’s no money left for anything else”
“My husband lost his job as company went into administration. We are struggling to pay bills as well as keep children clothed and fed”
Even more individuals are on the brink of food poverty, with a recent study showing that two-thirds of households currently receiving the uplift have run up greater debts since the lockdown and one- third have relied upon some form of charitable support.
The charity’s Chair of Trustees, Matt Stallard states: “To remove over £1,000 from the incomes of people already on the brink of food emergency, at a time when unemployment is rising would cause huge suffering and stress to thousands of people in Manchester, have a disastrous impact on local economies and businesses in the most deprived areas of the city, and push already stretched foodbanks, charities, and community support to breaking point”.
Families and children have been hit particularly hard, while the number of adults supported since lockdown has risen by 170% to 2,825, the number of children has risen by a huge 250% to 1,882. At a time when Marcus Rashford’s prominent campaign to extend Free School Meals has demonstrated how important it is to children’s wellbeing and education to be well-fed and supported, removing £1,000 of income from families would wipe out many of the benefits of this widely-publicly supported campaign.
Assistant Manager Freya Lightfoot outlined the scale of the impact of Covid-19 on families never previously affected by financial emergency:
“We gave out 1500 meals over the summer holidays for school children. 86.7% said that coronavirus had negatively impacted their financial situation and for more than two-thirds of the respondents, it was their first time ever accessing extra food provision”.
The foodbank also would like to urge all residents of Greater Manchester to get involved in the campaign by completing an online petition set up by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation
[https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/don-t-cut-universal-credit-lifeline] and contacting their MPs to encourage them to publicly support the “Keep the Lifeline” campaign.Chair Matt Stallard says: “We can all make a difference by telling our MPs how essential it is that they support this campaign and protect hundreds of thousands of people in Greater Manchester. Particularly in areas with government MPs and very high numbers of recipients of this uplift who will be made £1,000 poorer next year, those MPs will have a direct line to the Chancellor and the voices of their constituencies will be heard very loud in Westminster”.
