Much coverage was given in the National media to the Food bank debate held in the Houses of Parliament two days ago.
A lot of it was focused on who was smiling during the debates, but it was also reported that over 60 Labour MPs spoke, delivering stories of how people in their constituencies were in desperate need for the food from Foodbanks.
294 MPs voted No
It was brought to our attention today that the current Isle of Wight MP, Andrew Turner, had voted No to the debate, along with 293 other MPs. 251 MPs voted in favour of it.
Even though the debate had been covered a lot in the media, the full information of what the MPs actually voting for/against, beyond to “bring forward measures to reduce dependency on food banks”, wasn’t that clear. While looking in to it, we contacted Andrew Turner’s office to ask why he voted against the Foodbank Motion. His response is below.
The Foodbank Motion in full
The full details of what the proposal was are available in Hansard, the official record of Parliament. The proposed motion was:-
That this House
- notes that the number of people using foodbanks provided by the Trussell Trust alone has increased from 41,000 in 2010 to more than 500,000 since April this year, of whom one third were children;
- further notes that over the last three years prices have risen faster than wages;
- further notes the assessment of the Trussell Trust that the key factors in the rising resort to foodbanks are rising living costs and stagnant wages, as well as problems including delays to social security payments and the impact of the under-occupancy penalty;
- calls on the Government to publish the results of research into foodbanks commissioned by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs which Ministers promised would be made public in the summer of 2013;
- and further calls on the Government to bring forward measures to reduce dependency on foodbanks, including a freeze on energy prices, a water affordability scheme, measures to end abuses of zero hours contracts, incentives to companies to pay a living wage and abolition of the under-occupancy penalty.
Andrew Turner’s response
Andrew came back to us quickly with the following comment:-
“During the debate a number of contributers said that they very much regretted that this subject was being used as a political football. In fact it is a prime example of such tactics.
“As you can see what was billed as a motion about foodbanks clearly includes a number of controversial Labour party policies (the last section of the motion starting “and further calls on the Government to …”), unrelated to foodbanks. When members of other parties vote against the motion it is spun as them having voted against foodbanks. ”
“I think it is deplorable when the plight of vulnerable people is used in such a way.”
Image: marc falardeau under a CC BY 2.0 license
