Food Poverty in Britain

Just before Easter the Trussell Trust released its figures for 2013-14, showing over 900,000 people – one third of them children – have received emergency supplies from foodbanks.

On Thursday 24^th April 2014, the terms of reference for a parliamentary inquiry into hunger and food poverty were announced.

Co-chaired by the Rt Revd Tim Thornton, Bishop of Truro & the Rt Hon Frank Field MP, the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Hunger and Food Poverty in Britain will be holding a series of regional sessions as well as accepting written submissions, to gain an understanding of the causes of hunger, and the provision to alleviate it.

The Inquiry team would like to hear from you, if you wish to make a submission to the Inquiry, please input your evidence into the online contact form.

Alternatively, you can email written evidence to Andrew Forsey, Joint Secretary to the Inquiry team at: andrew.forsey@parliament.uk.

The findings will be published by the end of the year, hoping to inform the debate and campaigns in the run up to the General Election.

The Trussell Trust, a Christian-based charity that runs foodbanks, describes itself as “a Christian organisation motivated by Jesus’ teaching on poverty and injustice”.

They “serve people of all faith groups and beliefs or none”, but foodbanks have been criticised by top government figures.

Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, accused the charities like the Trussell Trust of “scaremongering” to oppose his welfare reforms.

This is firmly denied by them and other homelessness charity who state that “our interest is the needs of poor people who we see in their thousands every week.”

Following the release of the Trussell Trust statistics, 47 bishops and over 600 non-conformist leaders, clergy and laity from across all the major Christian denominations and organisation in Britain co-signed a letter calling for urgent Government action on food poverty on Wednesday 16^th April 2014

The letter, in support of the End Hunger Fast campaign, marked the biggest ever Christian intervention on UK food poverty in modern times and comes as other faith groups join the campaign.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) have recently published research which shows that a third of families affected by the Benefit Cap have already had to cut spending on essential items such as food, while more than one in ten of these families have needed to borrow money to make ends meet - often from payday lenders.

Jesus said that He had come to bring “good news to the poor” and to “set at liberty those who are oppressed” (Luke 4:18).

He was on the side of the poor and the have-nots, not the fat cats.

Jesus Himself was born on the street and the Bible says that Jesus was “laid in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7).

Jesus was born in the 1^st century equivalent of a petrol station.

This is all the more amazing if you believe that Jesus was not just any old person – He was God’s own son, who chose to come into our world.

 

It says something about God that He chose to be born not in a palace, but on the street.

He chose to die a painful death even though He was innocent.

God identifies with the poor, the hopeless, the accused, the rejected, the scum of the earth.

How about you?