Government Thinks Work Provides Food Money - Wrong

WORK STILL MEANS HUNGER

The government maintains that welfare reform is to push people into work and so lift themselves out of poverty.

Yet half of poverty is within the working poor, with a legal minimum wage far below the living wage.

Half the benefits bill is the working poor, hit by the benefits cap and bedroom tax.

With only 3 per cent of the benefits bill on the unemployed.

The other half of the benefits bill are pensioners. and they too go hungry.

Inbetween, these are women reaching 60 since 2013 who lost state pension payout, who could have gained the food money and still remain in work.
Worse is to come from 2016 when many women will never get a state pension:
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/state-pension-at-60-now

Half of women between 60 to 66 are within the working poor.

The majority reason women between 60 to 66 not in work is due to being disabled / chronic sick and those benefits being lost.

People over 60 are not listed within unemployment statistics.

FOOD BANKS ARE NOT ENOUGH

Families who are sanctioned off benefits cannot get a voucher for a food bank.

You have to be on benefits to get a food bank meal.

There is a rule that a claimant can get only 3 vouchers in a year.

WHY ARE FOOD BANKS NEEDED AT ALL IN 7TH RICHEST NATION ON EARTH?

Waiting for benefits for many weeks or even over a month, then told not getting benefit, is also a reason for hunger.

Why are those not receiving benefit by receipt of letter from DWP, not using this in lieu of vouchers to get food?

Many times, the government has been told that families have only a few pounds a week to feed a whole family of a couple and two or three kids or more, in many documentaries.

Now we have Dispatches tonight at 7.30pm - Dispatches Breadline Kids (repeated Thursday 3.10am) showing a mother with only £1.20 a day per person food money.
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/4od#3712963

However, this documentary finally shows that 2 out of 3 of the kids going hungry are in families with one adult in work on low wages, zero hour working contract or low income self employment.

Doctors sent a letter through the Lancet medical journal of 1 May 2014, to government to inform people in work were going hungry and malnutrition cases had doubled over last 5 years. It has to be recalled that it takes about a month or more to be so malnourished to need medical care to prevent death from starvation.
http://medimoon.com/2014/05/170-public-health-experts-call-on-pm-to-take-action-on-nutrition-and-hunger/

FOOD POVERTY IS FOR ALL AGES TODAY

Some kids are going to free breakfast clubs run by churches, because there is no food in the house at all.

Why are schools not giving free meals to all children of the working poor, to end any chance of Rickets in kids in England?

Oxfam said that a third of those struggling for food money, were because benefits were delayed by not just days but weeks and months.

Children, families, disabled / chronic sick all ages, women not in receipt of state pension at 60 and yet half are within the working poor - all going to food banks, when this is not a daily, 7 day a week free cafe canteen as in Europe and America.

Pre-payment meters electric / gas are the most expensive by £110 more a year than those paying with direct debits. So the poorest pay the most, as usual.

So the poorest get food from food banks that then need electric / gas to be cooked, which costs money that then reduces the money for food.

And we send food to landfill that is still edible - blog how government subsidies throwing food away, rather than subsidising the charity that supplies food banks:
http://theswansnewparty.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/government-uses-taxpayers-money-to-deny.html

My Blogs on how all could be fed every day:
http://theswansnewparty.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-pages-on-hunger-in-uk-index-to-blogs.html