Claim that 1 million people use food banks comprehensively debunked

The allegation has been made, including at the debate at Egremont in Copeland earlier this week between the parliamentary candidates here, that more than a million people are using food banks.

The fact that anyone needs to use food banks should be of concern to any compassionate person and I would not for a moment dispute that the number of people who are using food banks in Britain is much larger than any reasonable person should be comfortable with.

However the allegation that a million people are using them has been comprehensively demolished by the "Full Facts" fact checking team as you can read at

https://fullfact.org/factcheck/economy/food_bank_number-40853

This figure appears to have come from a statement from the Trussel Trust which co-ordinates food banks and has claimed that, quote "over 1,000,000 people have received at least three days’ emergency food from the charity’s foodbanks in the last twelve months”

However, this statement is extremely misleading, and, to quote the "full facts" team,

"comes from confusing the number of different people using Trussell Trust food banks in a year with the number of times they use the food banks."

After being challenged on this, the Trussel Trust have added to their press release the qualification that "these are not unique users."

In other words, if a family of four get a voucher to obtain food from a food bank for three days on a given week, that will count as four people fed for three days. If the same family go back a month later and do the same again, these two instances will show up in the Trussel Trust figures as a total of eight people fed for three days.

The Trussell Trust describe their service as “emergency food and support”, not sustained food provision. About half of their users only needed one food bank voucher in a year, though a significant minority, about 15%, used the service more than three times.

The Trust estimates that the average number of vouchers issued per year to the people who come to them is two. If that is anywhere near correct the number of people using their food banks for three days or more in a year is much closer to 550,000 than to 1.1 million.

Which is still worryingly high, and clear evidence of how important it is to keep going with the economic policies which have delivered two million new jobs in the last five years.

But please, guys, let's try to get our facts right!

Comments

Jim said…
What?, politicians and campaigners not presenting the facts correctly.

Oh my that's terrible.

I mean going round saying 1,000,000 people use food banks, well that would be like going around saying you veto'd a treaty when there was not even a treaty to veto. Or it would be like saying something as daft as "norway has no say int the rules"(even though it has a seat at every top table and we don't). It would be like saying that you cut the EU budget, when that is not true, it would be like saying "we will ensure that politicans are the servants never the masters" and then making desisions for the next fixe years, none of which the people could vote on.

oh that would be a terrible world that.

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