Mass dependence on emergency food parcels is a ‘moral scar’ on Britain. How do we end it?

What can Andy Burnham’s new, hope-inspiring government do to fulfil the Labour party’s two-year old election manifesto commitment to end mass dependence on emergency food parcels and address this ever-present ‘moral scar on our society’?

Against the backdrop of the Scottish Government’s plan towards ending the need for food banks, the abandonment of the two-child limit as part of the child poverty strategy, and the cash-first focused Crisis and Resilience Fund (CRF) in England, our new prime minister urgently needs to spell out what’s next.

With energy prices set to rise to a three-year high, food inflation on the increase, and housing costs a key driver of hardship, people up and down the country are having to survive on notoriously inadequate universal credit, £49.18 a week in asylum support, and insufficient wages. Financial precarity is only going to get worse. We need to see the development of a multi-year strategy, like the child poverty strategy, that paves the way for people to be able to afford essentials like food and, what’s more, to live well.

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Right to Food UK Commission recommendations will reference ‘a national crisis that needs an immediate emergency response’ based on the reality that ‘there is an income problem, not a food problem in this country’.

Ultimately our social security system needs to be fit for purpose. The five-week wait for a first payment of universal credit is a removable driver of poverty as well as the sanctions system, the benefit cap, and No Recourse to Public Funds status. Anyone unable to find work or facing the prospect of ill health should be able to afford at least a minimum income. Adequate wages and job security are paramount too as well as the localised advice and support that’s needed to maximise incomes. Ending the freeze on local housing allowance could make a significant difference in the coming months. These are evidence-led solutions that are incontrovertible.

We can’t afford to turn a blind eye to the role that notions of deservedness have played in food bank normalisation and in increasing the stigma that surrounds their use. In her new book, A Taste for Change, Trussell’s Heather Buckingham describes a multifaceted strategy to build ‘a food bank free future’. Examining sociological context to long-established evidence-based cash-first calls to address hunger, Buckingham argues that the evidence of poverty’s impact alone won’t get us to a future where no one needs to turn to charity to eat. Unless a collective belief emerges that everyone matters, then the moral imperative to take heed of the damage being inflicted on millions of food insecure households could well remain elusive. 

As groundbreaking cash-first CRF schemes are established in communities across England, it’s vital that the tripling of food surplus redistribution doesn’t paradoxically serve to further entrench a charitable food aid response to poverty at a local level. It’s long been established that feeding hungry people with surplus food is ‘a short-term band aid’ on the problem of poverty.

Food surplus redistribution giant Felix and others now agree but there’s a legacy of faulty messaging to reverse to universally establish that redistributed surplus food cannot possibly address or ‘fight hunger’. Unavoidable surplus food (the food that can’t be reduced at source) could be used within community food settings that people access because they want to not because they have to. However, for us to arrive at this long-term goal, any redistribution of surplus supply within food aid settings needs to be framed as a temporary response alongside clear objectives as to how unavoidable surplus food could be used when everyone has enough money to live off.  

And, in light of the scale of unclaimed social security payments and social tariffs, it’s essential to take the CRF, and its invaluable focus on helping individuals to build financial resilience, one step further by increasing investment in ways that people can access help and support to maximise their incomes at the earliest opportunity through local advice services and signposting resources that can be embedded in communities.

Grassroots food aid teams have long been driving change from the ground up. In 2022, the Independent Food Aid Network (IFAN), Trussell, and Feeding Britain facilitated the delivery of a letter from frontline food aid teams to the prime minister urging action to increase people’s incomes while reducing demand on overstretched and exhausted staff and volunteers.

In June 2025, hundreds of food bank staff and volunteers from across the sector descended on Westminster to lobby their MPs on the need for an Essentials Guarantee. For frontline food aid workers and volunteers, this is about building a future where people can afford to live and make choices. Food aid settings might transform into community hubs where trusted community spaces incorporating a range of wraparound services including advice and support to maximise income.

Other food aid spaces might develop into community food venues that people access through choice rather than necessity. However, the might of food aid teams alongside local partners within local community networks of support can only do so much to push forward the policy agenda. It’s the structural drivers of inequality that must be tackled by governments and Andy Burnham’s government first and foremost.

Sabine Goodwin is director of Independent Food Aid Network (IFAN). Find out more about A Taste for Change: How to build a food bank free future.

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