Ask yourself, how many bad days are you away from not being able to afford your next meal? The answer is significantly lower than you think.

Between April and September of 2022, over 300,000 people had to turn to Trussel Trust food banks for the first time in their lives, with an overall increase of 37% from the previous annual period. Imagine how it feels for those who have never used these networks, even during the pandemic, now having to rely on a non-governmental organisation (NGO) to provide the basics to keep them from going hungry. These statistics are a very real reminder of the thin divide between the average UK citizen and a life of not being able to afford essentials.

The Trussel Trust, founded in the late 1990s, works across over 1300 locations across the United Kingdom to help support those affected by poverty. Since its inception, the role of the Trussel Trust has increased dramatically in this fight against UK hunger, arguably becoming one of the most important organisations undertaking this work. In 2023, the NGO saw the ‘highest levels of need ever, even superseding the peak reached during the pandemic’. While it is remarkable that the Trussel Trust met the growing requirements for food banks, it is disappointing to see these records be broken almost year upon year. A family should never have to decide between using the heating, or feeding their children throughout winter, so why should a non-governmental organisation fulfil a responsibility that should be in the hands of the government?

Record usage of food banks is unsurprising entering a post-pandemic United Kingdom. However, the growing trend of the last decade continuing even further into the 2020 exemplifies a deeper problem in the UK: what is wrong with the benefits system, namely Universal Credit.

Universal Credit has seen an uncomfortable rollout over the decade with criticism of the policy, including multiple reports from workers within the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). The policy was supposed to simplify and streamline the legacy policy, bringing together several strands of benefits into one recurring monthly payment.

It should be noted that UC was created under previous Conservative leader Ian Duncan Smith within his thinktank ‘Centre for Social Justice’. While it is beneficial to find solutions through work with NGOs and thinktanks, it is clear how much of this policy has been created through a naïve ideological approach, rather than one crafted through ethical and evidence-based policy making.

Dynamic adjustments to payments compared to hours worked may save pennies for the government, but the instability caused to families relying on and expecting regular payments has the potential to disincentivise claimants to seek work. Calls from both the Trussel Trust and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, another poverty-focused charity organisation, have been made for Universal Credit to at least support the very essentials for claimants as the current payments are simply not enough.

Why is it that blame never lands at the door of the government, but instead at the feet of benefit claimants and rough sleepers who are consistently villainised and criticised for living a ‘lifestyle choice’, in the words of ex-home secretary Suella Braverman. It’s time that the government finally needs to decide what is best for claimants by listening to them, their co-workers in the DWP, and the very people working on the coalface of food banks who actually understand what is needed to reverse this terrible trend.

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