SEVERE hardship in Britain is being “normalised”, the foodbank charity Trussell warns.
Its second Hunger within the UK report, published on Wednesday, suggests that 14.1 million people experienced food insecurity last 12 months through an absence of cash — an increase from 11.6 million in 2022, when the last survey was carried out.
The survey also found that 61 per cent of households that reported going without food didn’t obtain any type of charitable food support. Trussell defines food insecurity as “going without or cutting back on quality or quantity of food attributable to an absence of cash”.
When asked why that they had not sought such support, greater than half (55 per cent) said that they didn’t feel that they need to because they weren’t facing financial hardship. One third (32 per cent) didn’t think that they were in enough need, and one quarter (23 per cent) thought that others were in greater need.
People who’re food-insecure have, sooner or later during the last 12 months, run out of food and been unable to afford more, have reduced their meal size, eaten less, gone hungry, or lost weight, owing to lack of cash. The broad structure and sequence of the questions utilized by Ipsos to evaluate food security for this research are similar to those utilized by the Food Standards Agency and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
“There is not any real path to tackling hunger without motion on social security,” Sumi Rabindrakumar, head of policy and research at Trussell, said at a briefing on Monday. She pointed to “successive freezes and cuts”, alongside rises in the price of food.
The charity is asking for the abolition of the two-child limit, estimating that this is able to lift 670,000 people out of “severe hardship”, including 470,000 children.
Introduced ten years ago, the cap implies that households claiming Universal Credit or Child Tax Credit and with a 3rd or subsequent child born after 6 April 2017 can not receive additional amounts for these children. It has been consistently opposed by the Church of England’s bishops (News, 31 August)
So far, the Government has declined to remove the cap, despite calls from charities, faith leaders, Labour grandees, including Gordon Brown, and the Work and Pensions Committee. The Resolution Foundation has estimated that abolishing the limit would cost £2.5 billion in 2024-25, rising to £3.6 billion the next 12 months. A YouGov poll conducted in 2024 found that 60 per cent of respondents — including half of the Labour voters — supported retaining the cap.
The director of policy at Trussell, Helen Barnard, cited work by the think tank More in Common on behalf of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. This found that support for the cap was “highly contingent on how the policy is framed”. Research has shown that presenting the query within the context that children deserve “the perfect possible start in life”, alongside a pledge to extend advice and support on budgeting or problem debt, increased public support for removing the cap.
The most “powerful frame” in favour of retaining the limit was responsibility. But this view was “mutable” in focus groups when the conversation turned to the numerous aspects beyond parents’ control, resembling illness or job loss, Ms Barnard said.
Ipsos had also conducted a separate survey of just about 4000 individuals who had been referred to a random sample of foodbanks within the Trussell network. It found that families at foodbanks were, on average, left with just £104 every week after housing costs — 17 per cent of the figure for the common UK household.
In addition, 30 per cent of those referred were in working households — up from 24 per cent in 2022. People in manual and repair positions — resembling bus drivers and care employees — were among the many working people probably to face hunger, despite having a job. “We see a whole lot of people who find themselves doing shift work, agency work, zero-hours contracts,” Ms Barnard said.
The DWP reports that, in 2023-24, 7.5 million people (11 per cent) within the UK were in food-insecure households, up from seven per cent in 2021-22. This survey asks about people’s experience of food insecurity within the previous three months, while the Trussell/Ipsos survey asked concerning the past 12 months.
