As a constituent of Jacob Rees-Mogg, I was dismayed to hear his comments on the assistance that Unicef is providing to children in Southwark (Jacob Rees-Mogg under fire for dismissing Unicef’s UK grants as stunt, 17 December).
The assistance being given in the form of breakfast clubs for some of the poorest children in our society is critical to sustaining their health in the short term as well as their long-term life chances. We know that children concentrate for longer and learn better when they are not hungry.
We also know that the pandemic’s impact is being disproportionately felt by the poorest. Whatever he might personally feel about the reasons why individual families fall on hard times, it cannot be right that children have to suffer because of it.
At a time of year founded on Dickensian tradition, rather than criticising Unicef, one wonders whether Mr Rees-Mogg might have reflected on how it came to pass that we seem to have made scant progress in the 175 years since A Christmas Carol was written. In the 21st century, the yawning gap in provision to support the most vulnerable in our society is laid bare for all to see.
Jonathan Layzell
Hinton Blewett, Somerset
• As a food poverty campaigner, whose local authority area includes Jacob Rees-Mogg’s constituency, I know the extent of hunger and hardship on his doorstep. His nearest food bank saw the largest increase in demand in the south-west in April 2020 compared with the same month in 2019, at 551%. Roughly half its food parcels go to children – hardly surprising when you consider that, in some parts of his constituency, 31% of children live in poverty.
None of this moves Rees-Mogg, who famously praised food banks as “rather uplifting”. Why, then, is he rattled by Unicef’s intervention, as he was by that of the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty, Philip Alston, in 2018? Could it be because, when international organisations step in, it shines a spotlight on the impact of his government’s welfare reforms, which have resulted in hundreds of thousands of parents – including working parents – being unable to afford to feed their children? The growth of food banks such as those in Rees-Mogg’s constituency, on the other hand, allows him and his parliamentary colleagues to pretend that food poverty is the remit of local volunteers, not central government. It is this deceit that is “playing politics”, not the vital work of Unicef.
Jane Middleton
Bath
• As a pensioner, I’ve just indulged in my own “political stunt” by giving £100 to the Winchester Basics Bank.
In spite of the absence of famine and only occasional floods, we still have families struggling to survive in this allegedly affluent city. I know NHS staff who would have to work for more than two years to earn the equivalent of a Dominic Cummings pay rise. My donations normally remain anonymous so I’m grateful to Jacob Rees-Mogg for prompting me to go public and political to highlight the unacceptable wealth gap in one of the richest countries on the planet, certainly made worse by Covid but caused by a decade of austerity. Marcus Rashford knows it, Unicef knows it. I know it. Rees-Mogg is the one who should be ashamed.
Karen Barratt
Winchester
• Perhaps Mr Rees-Mogg could chip in £35,000 of his disposable income to regain the sovereignty suborned by Unicef – or would that be a cheap political stunt?
Bernard Brownsword
Whaley Bridge, Derbyshire
