Government announces new national survey of household food insecurity The DWP will now be asking food poverty questions used in a US Government survey

The Government is to launch a national food insecurity index in a bid to find out how often low-income families in Britain skip meals and go hungry.

‘We’ve known for years that people will use food banks, whether independent or Trussell Trust, as a last resort and that food insecurity levels are far higher as so many suffer in silence’ Niall Cooper, End Hunger UK The i politics newsletter cut through the noise Email address is invalid Email address is invalid Thank you for subscribing! Sorry, there was a problem with your subscription.

Reliance on food banks is now an widespread issue in modern Britain, with some 500,000 people now depending on parcels, and around two million, including children, said to be malnourished, according to Oxfam.

With poverty showing no sign of decreasing, the official measure will be introduced into an existing framework run by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP).

The department will be including the 10 adult questions from the US Government’s survey on household food insecurity into the UK Family Resources Survey, an established annual survey.

Rising hunger

The DWP will be looking to better understand food insecurity in the UK. It is generally defined as people for whom money problems are preventative in buying enough food, and sourcing food of sufficient quality.

“Building a better understanding of household food needs will help us to ensure we’re targeting support to those who need it most, so we’ve worked closely with stakeholders to develop tools to help us best collect this information,” the DWP said.

The national measurement of food insecurity, which was first reported by the Guardian, will begin in April 2019.

It will involve all four nations using samples from 20,000 households, the Food Foundation, an independent think tank, said in a briefing sent to i.

The Government’s decision follows a 2017 private members’ bill by Labour MP Emma Lewell-Buck calling for the Government to act.

Questions borrowed from the US

Ms Lewell-Buck, MP for South Shields, said: “I am thrilled that the Government has finally agreed to implement the asks from my Food Insecurity Bill, and will start measuring UK hunger.

“It is a real pity that it has taken this long to be enacted as every single day that has passed has been a day that another person has gone hungry. This positive step forward should not be used as an excuse for Government inaction whilst this important data is being gathered.

“The enacting of my Bill should be seen as a pre-cursor to real action on the devastating levels of hunger we are seeing in all of our communities.”

The Food Foundation said nearly four million children in the UK live in households for whom a healthy diet is unaffordable. The body has welcomed the move, though said it has come late in the day.

Chief executive Anna Taylor said: “We’ve known for too long now that a disturbing number of people in the UK don’t have access to enough nutritious food, but our knowledge has been too patchy to identify real solutions. In the fifth richest economy in the world, that’s a social justice disaster.

Charities and action groups combine

“But this new national measurement of food insecurity is a massive step forward, and will provide essential foundations for the response we so urgently need.

“A problem we understand is a problem we can solve: now we’ll have the information we need to act.”

The announcement to introduce the survey was made during a roundtable meeting with a number of other campaign groups, think tanks, charities, data services, and organisations linked to food in the UK.

Among others, teams from the ONS, the DWP, Defra, Public Health England, Sustain, and the Trussell Trust were present.

Most groups who have been lobbying the Government to do more to combat hunger in Britain have welcomed the news but also say it has been too long in the pipeline.

Suffering in silence

Niall Cooper, director of Church Action on Poverty and chair of the End Hunger UK board, said: “It was over three years ago that End Hunger UK coalition members first called on the Government to ‘count the hungry.’

“So we’re delighted, three years later, that food insecurity levels are finally going to be measured regularly.”

Sabine Goodwin, from the Independent Food Aid Network, said: “For too long we’ve been depending on statistics from the Trussell Trust network to decipher rapidly rising levels of food insecurity in the UK.

“We’ve known for years that people will use food banks, whether independent or Trussell Trust, as a last resort and that food insecurity levels are far higher as so many suffer in silence.

“The news that the ten food insecurity-related questions will be added to the DWP’s Family Resources Survey is very welcome indeed and we look forward to the systemic changes that this critical data could lead us to.”