Iqbal Mohamed

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) on securing this important debate forward. Food poverty—and poverty in general—is a growing crisis in the UK that demands urgent action. The increasing reliance on food banks is not only a humanitarian concern but a reflection of deeper systemic challenges that we as a society must address. We have heard the statistics from Members from all parties, and they are sobering. In 2023-24, the Trussell Trust had 1,699 food banks—a number that has only increased—and there are nearly 1,200 independent food banks across the country. I estimate that there are more than 3,000 food banks today, distributing 4 million to 5 million parcels every year. The root causes have been identified, so I will not take up time repeating them, but they include the failure of wages to keep pace with the rising cost of living and inflation, with many workers trapped in low-paid and insecure jobs; benefit cuts; delays in universal credit payments; the two-child benefit cap; and now the compounding factor of the withdrawal of the winter fuel allowance. In my constituency, four out of 10 children live in poverty. The reliance on food banks is a symptom of deeper issues. It is about not just food insecurity but income insecurity. The Government must act decisively to address the root causes. I welcome the raising of the minimum wage, but it must reflect the actual cost of living. Benefits must also reflect the cost of living. A single person allowance of £85 is £25 less than is required to cover the cost of a person’s basic essentials, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The increasing use of food banks is not inevitable: it is a consequence of policy choices. The UK is the sixth-wealthiest nation in the world, and no one should go hungry in one of the world’s largest economies.