Hansard

I was out in North America in April during Scotland week, so I took the opportunity to visit the New York City human resources administration/department of social services and, when I was in Toronto, the Ontario Association of Food Banks. In New York, I met the team of Cecile Noel, who is the executive deputy commissioner with emergency and intervention services. I will cover the main points that came out of that meeting. The department provides adult protective services and is a cover-all, which means that food provision and domestic violence are dealt with by the same department. The department has what it calls emergency feeding services, which are interesting; they provide 500 programmes of food bank support in New York City, or about 50 per cent of the support in the city. The services receive state and federal funding amounting to the equivalent of £8.3 million for the food banks. Most of that goes on providing food pantries; 25 per cent of it is used to provide soup kitchens as we imagine them to be—that is, specific places where people turn up to be fed. Recently, there has been a fairly sharp increase in families using the services whereas, in the past, single people have always been the main client group. The services also operate a food stamp scheme, and they have introduced a debit card scheme that they hope will cut down on the corruption that has existed—mainly, I should say, on the part of the retail outlets rather than the individuals receiving the food stamps. In the scheme, a supplement is put on to a debit card, which can be used at any store. However, the services are already finding that some malpractice is occurring. More than 1.5 million New Yorkers receive food stamps. Income-based eligibility criteria are applied to the debit card scheme, which is used by 1.8 million people. The maximum amount is $189 per month, per person; the amount depends on the size of the client’s household, their expenses and their income. People can use both the debit card and food banks. Food banks are non-judgmental: people just turn up and no questions are asked about whether they are in receipt of anything else. The services have also started a food stamp nutrition outreach programme to try to educate people about food. They work closely with supermarkets and other food companies to increase donations of healthy, nutritious food, and they have also started cooking classes and workshops. All of that is run under an umbrella organisation called Food Bank For New York City, and there is a formal arrangement with supermarkets to offload surplus food. What really struck me about the New York City experience was that that kind of food provision is just part of the fabric of what happens; it is part of what seems to be a social service. There was no real strategic approach to it, just a reliance on the voluntary sector to plug the gaps and an expectation that that would happen because it has been ever thus. Toronto was a bit different. The Ontario Association of Food Banks, which was set up in 1992, is voluntary; it receives no Government funding and is completely autonomous. Individual food banks affiliate to it. It struck me that our own experience—limited though it is—suggests that the Trussell Trust is moving towards the same model. The association has 127 food banks as members and 1,100 affiliates for hunger relief programmes, with agencies across the province. The association’s approach is more holistic than the approach that I found in New York City. It is trying to address the root causes of hunger; like others, it talks about sustainable solutions, and it wants to make food bank use unnecessary. The first Canadian food bank started in 1982 and the association told me that, since then, food banks have gone from being a temporary solution to being a need. The association grew from the grass roots and, like so many of these things, was born out of the church system. People can go to a food bank once a month and receive three to four days’ food, which is intended to get them to the end of the month. Although the association is not judgmental, it does have a limit on how many visits someone can make to a food bank. The association said that there were particular issues in rural areas. In an earlier evidence session, the committee heard about similar issues in rural areas of Scotland with regard to stigma and the loss of dignity associated with everyone knowing that a person is using a food bank. The association does not do food stamps or vouchers. The food banks themselves serve 2.8 per cent of the population in Toronto; there has been a big increase in their use, with households coming for the first time. The primary source of income for 69 per cent of clients is social assistance and disability support. The association said that most recipients are rental tenants, who spend 71 per cent of their income on housing. I thought that that statistic was really high. I know that house rents in Ontario can cover utilities and some furniture, but we tend not to include those things in rents here and we had no breakdown to enable us to make a comparison. The association has a varied clientele. The average food bank user uses the service for one year to 18 months, and the association reckons that less than 5 per cent of their users are long term. As for what has driven demand since 2008, I note that food bank use increased by 28 per cent between 2008 and 2009, and it has not fallen since. I guess that the association was suggesting that the impact of the recession led to the increase, but the fact is that the recession was relatively mild in Canada compared with other places. The current politics of those in control in Ontario might also account for some of that increase. As I said earlier, the Ontario Association of Food Banks takes a holistic approach; for example, it campaigns on these issues because it sees the use of food banks as a symptom of poverty. It is trying to create community hubs to address the wider issues; it is also focusing on promoting healthy food, and it works with Canada’s five major grocery chains. The conclusion was that food banks are plugging the gaps in state provision. Although the association felt that there was a danger of food banks becoming institutionalised mainstream support, it also recognised that, given that the use of food banks has done nothing but increase since they began in 1982, they might already have become mainstream support and are becoming institutionalised, despite the fact that neither local nor national Government gives them direct support. The association also told us that people automatically give to food banks. Having visited my family over there, which I do quite often, I have picked up the same thing. It is just something that is done; because people see it as one of their responsibilities, it just happens. Moreover, under the Ontario Local Food Act, 2013, farmers can claim a 25 per cent tax credit based on the fair market value of the food that they donate to food banks and other charitable meal programmes. As a result, farmers are supplying food banks directly. The Ontario Association of Food Banks thought that we should get firm information to monitor trends in use, the characteristics of food bank users and so on. The association has started to do that comparatively recently, and it has been surprised at the findings. We have already heard evidence of that kind of work being done. The association also thought that we should set standards for use. For example, people should be fed on the basis of need, not on any other criteria, and there should be a code of conduct to ensure that people are treated decently. I will conclude my report with my own views. I found some of what I discovered quite depressing because of the evidence that we have heard about what is happening here in Scotland. When I looked at the situation, I almost found myself thinking that, unless some very big change happens here, that is the road down which we are heading. From what I could see, the big difference between New York City and Ontario was that people in New York City, even at official level, did not really get what I was saying about our worries about food bank use becoming mainstream and institutionalised. I suppose that it has always been that way for them, and they did not really understand the distinction. It was very telling that the Ontario Association of Food Banks absolutely got what I was saying, and that it was frustrated that it had suffered from provision creep and that food bank use had become institutionalised without anybody noticing. That is the big warning for us. If we do not want that sort of thing in our society, we have to get a big warning out there, and we should fight very hard against getting pulled into an attitude of “This is just the way things are,” or “This is just what happens.” 11:15