At a conference on welfare reform, and audience member asked the welfare minister, Lord Freud, if working people using food banks to get by was sustainable.
Freud caused controversy in July of this year when the millionaire former investment banker and Tory minister told the House of Lords that there was no evidence to link the growing number of food banks to growing poverty and that those who visited food banks were just after free food.
In response to the question, Freud said that food banks were an ‘interesting’ way of providing in-kind support by way of food parcels, and urged local councils to ramp-up their support for in-kind initiatives, saying “I think that the local authorities and the local districts may very well look at ramping up their support in kind in that way, depending on where they are. I think that is one of the things that they are looking at and I think it’s absolutely appropriate that they do so.”
He went on to say it was “absolutely appropriate” that charities provided free food parcels for people who could not afford groceries.
It seems he missed (or ignored) the point that in a modern society people should not have to rely on hand-outs from food banks, and the charities providing this much-needed service are trying to ease the effects of draconian government welfare reforms which are pushing the country further and further into becoming a slave nation.
Perhaps his view of the world is a little different when we consider that he earns a hell of a lot of money from the state by sitting on his arse doing nothing of any real use or value.
Local councils are already feeling the effects of government cuts to their budgets, and many are struggling to keep statutory services operating, let alone divert resources to welfare assistance schemes to fill in the gap left by government greed.
In a recent report in the Guardian, the largest local authority, Birmingham council, have warned that they will not be able to fund statutory services as a result of cuts to their budget and the added pressure of trying to cope with demands placed on them by the government’s welfare reform.
All 152 councils in England have set up welfare assistance schemes to replace the crisis loan and community care grant elements of the old social fund, which were until April provided by the DWP.
It is ridiculous to think that working people are so impoverished that they have to resort to local welfare schemes in order to survive. The use of slave labour through grossly underpaid jobs is rife, and until the government start talking the situation more and more will find it near impossible to make ends meet as prices continue to rise and the real value of wages continues to fall.
The fault is squarely at the feet of government. They have introduced policies which ONLY affect the poor and vulnerable in society while their own kind are enjoying increased financial wealth. The government have failed to control the energy industry even though their profiteering has been obvious since the government took power.
This latest debacle involving Freud shows that the government are not at all interested in the people who make up the majority of society, only seeing them as cash cows to produce more profit for giant corporations and the taxman – a large amount of which is wasted on the personal pursuits of government ministers.
The government know very well that they have little chance of winning the next election and will milk the system for every penny they can.
