The government’s welfare cuts are forecast to trigger an increase in inequality – a concerning development in and of itself. But a much more serious consequence of those cuts is the accompanying rise of destitution (Welfare cuts ‘risk causing sustained rise in inequality’, 22 February).
Feeding Birkenhead is working tirelessly to prevent poorer families and individuals falling into the clutches of destitution. Yet the frontline projects and volunteers who undertake this work report that a growing number of vulnerable people are dropping out of the system altogether. Single people living alone – including an army veteran who recently had to survive in the bushes, and a vulnerable man who was sanctioned for missing a benefit appointment because he was in A&E – are particularly at risk of succumbing to this social evil.
Likewise, children from poorer families, for whom Feeding Birkenhead provides free dinners during the school holidays, are in some cases going without food in the morning as there is nothing to eat at home. They arrive hungry.
Meanwhile, several of the town’s schools report that during term time a growing number of children are beginning the day’s lessons on an empty stomach, without having eaten a proper breakfast at home. They too arrive hungry.
Nothing short of a mega-programme of social reform is needed to narrow the inequalities that exist on so many fronts between the wealthiest and the poorest households in this country. We must first, though, fight a rearguard action to eliminate the destitution that afflicts all too many of those at the bottom of the pile.
Frank Field MP
Labour, Birkenhead
• Your article (Council pilots free school meals at weekends, 17 February) states that the proposed scheme in North Lanarkshire is the first of its kind in Britain. However, around 1969 or 1970 I was part of a project to provide free school meals to schoolchildren on weekdays during the long summer holidays. Participants were “free school meals” children during term time. The holiday lunches were great, particularly as the quantity of food was very generous and the dinner ladies were the same staff as during the school year.
One year the meals were served in my own local primary school, Goldenhill Primary in Hardgate, and another year the meals were served in another local school, St Mary’s in Duntocher. Our local authority back then was Dumbartonshire.
It makes me sad that 50 years later parents’ incomes aren’t enough to provide sufficient food for their families.
Deborah Hume
Great Malvern, Worcestershire
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