FOUR weeks in from Rishi Sunak’s increasingly fratricidal decision to call a snap election, the country is still waiting on the main political parties to set out any kind of vision that will tackle the deep-seated poverty that affects so many, as well as its manifestations and its causes.

Research figures from the House of Commons Library outlines the scale of the problem. Prolonged austerity and a shift of wealth from the bottom to the top resulted in 11.4 million people (17 per cent) in relative poverty before housing costs during 2022-23, and 14.3 million after housing costs (21 per cent). This includes 3.2 million children (22 per cent) before housing costs and 4.3 million after housing costs (30 per cent).

The number of people unable to meet their basic needs is shameful. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, “Destitution, where people cannot afford to meet their most basic physical needs to stay warm, dry, clean and fed — was sitting at around 3.8 million people who experienced destitution in 2022, including around one million children.”

The outcomes from such shocking figures are homelessness, increasing health inequalities and life expectancy differentials, widening educational attainment figures between children living in poverty compared to those living in affluence and comfort, as well as homelessness, debt and hunger.

Food insecurity is rife and it affects as many people in work as out of work. Bakers’ union (BFAWU) surveys over the past three years have demonstrated clearly the scale of in-work poverty and how many of their members — the people who grow, produce and distribute our food — are themselves feeling food insecure as a result of low pay and insecure work.

The most recent food insecurity tracker from the Food Foundation in January this year makes for stark reading. Eight million adults (14.8 per cent of households) experienced food insecurity in January 2024, three million adults (5.8 per cent of households) reported not eating for a whole day because they couldn’t afford or get access to food, 20 per cent of households with children reported experiencing food insecurity compared with 12.7 per cent of households without children and 7 per cent of single adult households with children reported not eating for a whole day because they couldn’t afford or get access food.

This is not just a national scandal, it’s a national emergency.

The Food and Work Network, inspired by the work of BFAWU, was set up to research and consider the link between food and work insecurity.

Made up of trade unionists, community activists, academics and campaigners, we have over the past couple of years crisscrossed Britain and heard from local people in London, Liverpool, Cardiff and Sheffield about the challenges facing them and the inspirational work of so many providing mutual aid and support in their local communities.

However, as inspirational and powerful as the mutual support networks across this country are, what we need are structural solutions: policies, resources and a strategic vision to tackle this crisis and prevent people from going hungry — negating the need for local groups to organise and ensure children are not going to bed on empty stomachs.

Notwithstanding the lip service paid and odd reference made, there has been little policy and no strategy for addressing food insecurity from any political party during this tepid general election campaign. We would obviously expect the architects of poverty, the Tories, to offer nothing other than more of the same; just one of many reasons why they have to go.

However, we expect so much more from the Labour Party. There is a national poverty and food insecurity emergency affecting people and it needs to be tackled.

Yet, the party that should be doing something about it and that is about to win the election by a landslide is offering limited change. It’s as if these levels of poverty, food and work insecurity have become normalised in the eyes of the current Labour front bench.

They should never be so, and much more must be done. Triple the effort, not triple locks on tax rises, to tackle poverty, attacks on the most vulnerable and low pay is what the country needs from this incoming Labour government.

For starters this should include a properly robust New Deal for Workers, a rise in the national minimum wage and incomes generally, and protection and support for the most vulnerable with a humane and supportive benefits system, starting with the abolition of the universal credit elements such as the two-child limit, the five-week wait and sanctions.

Abolishing the two-child limit would lift half a million kids out of poverty in an instant and it is frankly distressing to hear Darren Jones justify the Labour Party’s decision not to abolish it as a “trade-off.”

Tackling child poverty is surely a number one priority, and such non-negotiable, for any Labour government. It should never, ever be considered a trade-off.

The Labour Party must do more, it must do better in setting out a plan and it must not accept the poverty levels in this country as normal. They are not. They are a stain on this country and must be tackled.

If a Labour government does not set out to eradicate the poverty that is blighting so many lives, making so many hungry and denying millions of children opportunity and limiting their future life chances, it would be an unforgivable failure of historic proportions.

The Food and Work Network includes Dr Tommy Kane (Unity Consulting), Alex Colas (professor of international relations, Birkbeck, University of London) and Dr Michael Calderbank (Solidarity Consulting). Visit www.fawn.org.uk for more information.