Lee Anderson and the Tories’ thorny relationship with the poor

A Tory MP has been heavily criticised for claiming that people who use food banks “cannot budget” or “cook properly”.

Lee Anderson “stunned” parliament when he said there was not a “massive use” for food banks, “despite the country being in the grip of a cost of living crisis due to spiralling inflation, Universal Credit cutbacks and rising energy bills”, said the Daily Mirror.

The MP for Ashfield, in Nottinghamshire, claimed people could “cook meals from scratch” for “30p a day” instead. “We have generation after generation who cannot cook properly – they cannot cook a meal from scratch – and they cannot budget,” he said.

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The comments “sparked widespread outrage”, said the Mirror. Andrew Forsey, national director of the charity Feeding Britain, said charities like his own were “increasingly dealing with outright destitution where people cannot afford the gas and electricity they need to cook meals from scratch”.

Poverty campaigner Jack Monroe tweeted that “you can’t cook meals from scratch with nothing”, and that “the issue is not ‘skills’, it’s 12 years of Conservative cuts to social support”.

Austerity years

Twelve years ago, David Cameron came into power claiming that the Conservatives were “best placed to fight poverty”. He accused the previous Labour government of making people dependent on the state, but his austerity programme and cuts to benefits were criticised for making things worse.

A ten-year review by Professor Sir Michael Marmot and the UCL Institute of Health Equity found that austerity had taken “a significant toll on equity and health”. Marmot said poverty had a “grip on our nation’s health” and something had “gone badly wrong”.

Even Tory backbencher Stephen Crabb admitted in 2020 that the government had “squeezed too hard” on benefits in the austerity years, fuelling hardship in the country, reported The Independent.

Yet that same year, an analysis of the 2019 general election result by the British Election Study found that the Conservatives had become more popular among people with low incomes than those on high incomes – attributed by some to Boris Johnson’s pledge to “get Brexit done”.

Once the pandemic began, the Tories introduced free lunch parcels to isolating children who would normally receive free school meals, including during some holidays, and boosted Universal Credit by £20 a week, but received a widespread backlash when the policies were wound down.

Cost-of-living headache

The cost-of-living crisis is now proving to be “the Tories’ biggest headache”, said Freddie Hayward at The New Statesman. He put the Conservative losses in the recent local elections down to the party’s failure to address the plight of struggling families, citing research that showed seven million adults were living in households that had to buy less food in April or had to miss a meal.

Writing for The Guardian last month, Marmot warned that the “poorest people in the UK are about to experience a fresh wave” of indignities. “The cost of living crisis – and the chancellor’s failure to deal with it – is unprecedented, with its threats to the health and wellbeing of the nation,” he said.

Rishi Sunak might beg to differ. In his latest spring statement, he raised National Insurance thresholds to £12,570, among other measures. Johnson, meanwhile, has pointed to the £22bn of help for those “hardest hit” by the crisis and has hinted at more help to come.

But in his written introduction to the government’s legislative agenda for the next year, the PM warned that “no country is immune” to the cost-of-living crisis “and no government can realistically shield everyone from the impact”.

‘Tone-deaf media interviews’

Katy Balls at the i news site agreed that “the really big factors contributing to the crisis are largely out of [the government’s] control”. But she added that there have been “a string of tone-deaf media interviews – as Tory politicians struggle to come up with something to say about the hardship facing many”.

Environment Secretary George Eustice was labelled “patronising” for suggesting families buy value brands to save money. And the prime minister was “slammed” for trying to take credit for introducing free travel for the over-60s during an ITV interview, in which he was told a 77-year-old pensioner was forced to ride on buses all day to keep warm, reported the Evening Standard.

Anderson’s comments on budgeting opened the party up to further criticism, but speaking to Sky News this morning, Justice Minister Victoria Atkins insisted that his views did not represent her own or “anyone else in government”.

“We want to give not just immediate help but longer-term support as well – and I really, really appreciate the efforts of food banks and voluntary groups around the country who work day in, day out to help people when they are in great distress,” she said.