Helen Barnard is Director of Policy, Research and Impact at Trussell
A staggering 9.3 million people across the UK are now facing hunger and hardship, 3 million of whom are children.
These figures paint a grim picture of the reality too many people are experiencing, which food banks see every day in communities across the UK.
Our latest research has shown that there are policy solutions that could end this spiral, but if the UK Government does not act hundreds of thousands more people will be pushed into this situation over the next few years.
The need for food banks in the UK has never been higher, with 3.1 million emergency food parcels distributed by Trussell’s community of food banks between April 2023 and March 2024, the highest number ever in a single year and almost double the number given out five years ago. Food banks are facing another difficult winter, they simply cannot meet the level of need in their communities.
With our research indicating that a quarter of children under four (24%) are now growing up facing hardship and hunger, there is no time to waste.
Growing up in families facing hardship has well-documented impacts on children’s education and prospects for the future, including their chances of securing and sustaining employment and decent earnings. This can create a vicious cycle which means their own children are increasingly likely to experience poverty too.
The UK Government committed to ending the need for emergency food in their manifesto, but they now need to put these words into action. They must start delivering on this promise by updating the social security system to ensure that everyone can afford the essentials and shaping a long-term strategy to tackle the hunger and hardship that millions of people are facing.
Hardship and hunger come with a huge cost.
Most significantly, there’s the human cost of people not being able to afford the essentials, and the damage this does to individuals, families and communities. But there is also a cost to our economy and public services. Our schools and GP surgeries are buckling under the pressure caused by hardship in our communities. This is adding to the cost and reducing the effectiveness of public services, as well as holding people back from getting and sustaining work and dampening economic growth.
The UK Government has repeatedly stated that it intends to ‘make work pay’, as have many previous governments. However, most people (58%) currently facing hunger and hardship are from a family where somebody is working, indicating work is too often not a reliable route out of hardship. Too many jobs are hard to get and sustain for people with health conditions or caring responsibilities, are unstable or simply do not pay enough to cover essential costs.
More than half of people currently facing hunger and hardship live in a family where somebody is disabled. Many disabled people would like to work but face multiple barriers to finding a job they can access and the right support to get and sustain it. The additional costs that come with many disabilities add to the financial pressure and can create a vicious cycle where someone’s health is made worse by hardship, isolation and anxiety, which then increases the barriers to going into work.
Families with young children also face a disproportionate risk of hunger and hardship in the UK. In many cases this arises because of the barriers faced by many parents to getting into work and the fact that many find themselves trapped in low paid, part-time jobs.
Additionally, despite significant policy changes in recent years, high childcare costs continue to act as a barrier. These finding should make us all stop and question how it can be that our society and economy have been designed in ways that trap millions of children and disabled people in such in such severe hardship.
Low wages mean that many working people must also turn to social security payments to get by, but the poor design and delivery of this system means it is not providing the right support at the right time, leaving people without enough money to live on.
Analysis of a range of policy options available to the UK government found that there are solutions available which, if implemented, could mean that millions fewer people face hunger and hardship. This analysis showed that updating our social security system to ensure everyone has enough to get by is the most effective way to tackle hunger and hardship in the UK.
Embedding an Essentials Guarantee into Universal Credit would have the greatest impact on lifting people out of hardship. Meaning that everyone has a protected minimum amount of support to afford essentials such as food and household bills.
If the UK government were to implement this, it would mean 1.9 million fewer people would be at risk of hunger and hardship over the next two years. This policy would mean a reduction of a fifth in the number of people who are expected to face hunger and hardship. The Essentials Guarantee is a popular position across the political spectrum, with 72% of the public stating that they support it. This included 82% of 2019 Labour voters, 83% of 2019 Liberal Democrat voters, and 62% of 2019 Conservative voters, showing broad cross-party support.
We know that updating social security isn’t the only answer to tackling unacceptably high levels of hunger and hardship.
Good work, affordable homes and strong communities are all vital to achieving this goal.
But without a more effective social security system, we are highly likely to see hunger and hardship continue to rise, further increasing the pressure and cost of public services, holding back economic growth and damaging families. If the UK government is to deliver on its manifesto commitments to end the need for emergency food in the UK, then making sure our social security system is fit for purpose is a crucial and urgent priority.
In office, the Conservative party took a number of steps to address poverty and hardship, especially during the pandemic and cost of living crisis.
In opposition, the party has a vital role to play in holding the government to account for the promises they have made to the public. This autumn the new government will lay out its first budget. Inevitably this will be a highly charged and politicised event and will rightly be scrutinised closely by all the opposition parties.
We have proposed several affordable, urgent actions to be included in this budget. This includes introducing a protected minimum floor in Universal Credit, to limit the deepest hardship caused by debt deductions and the benefit cap. This fiscally responsible measure will make a tangible difference to millions of people and will be a step towards reforming the social security system.
We know that ending hunger together will need everyone to play their part – politicians from every party, individuals, families, communities, civil society and business. And there’s no time to waste. We are urging the UK government to take immediate action in the upcoming Budget and to lay out a concrete plan for the next five years to tackle hunger and hardship. We would also urge politicians and supporters from all parties to join us in advocating for this action. If the right steps are taken to support people on the lowest incomes, then we’ll be able to make serious headway towards a future without the need for food banks.
