Despite the partisan rowdiness, the Commons food bank debate revealed signs of political consensus over the role of welfare reform in precipitating food poverty

During the rather fraught Commons debate on food banks yesterday there was the odd plea for MPs to "stop using food banks as a political football."

As a rule I never trust a politician who says they want party politics taken out of something, especially one who says it to make a party political point, as the Harlow Tory MP Robert Halfon managed to do.

But there is a point here, and one raised by some of the more thoughtful contributions: yes, the explosion in food banks is a disgraceful state of affairs, but apart from just blaming each other, what are we going to do about it?

Finding a consensus over what action to take may be difficult. But some Tory MPs at least accepted a vital point: in order to tackle food poverty you first need to understand what causes it, and that means acknowledging the role of welfare reform, low wages and the spiralling cost of food, rent and energy.

This was not a tough call for Labour MPs, who made these points (but rather sidestepped the implications of their own promise to be "tougher" than the Tories on benefits). But it remains a sticking point for ministers, who remain in denial, and refuse to release their own long-delayed research into UK food aid, which will almost certainly highlight the influential role of benefit delays, sanctions and cuts in the rise of charity food.

Not everyone on the government side of the benches, however, is quite so stuck. In fact some of the most striking contributions were interesting precisely because they came from Tories who were at least prepared to recognise the simple, undeniable reality of who goes to food banks and why, and who are anxious to see uncomfortable research on food poverty carried out and not suppressed.

Take Stephen Mosley, the Conservative MP for Chester (col 825), who noted:

Figures from my local food bank show that 59% of those who have used the food bank since April have visited because of changes to benefits and a growing number of people are visiting because of sanctions... As the majority of people who need food bank assistance are those who face changes to benefits, the clear long-term solution is a more joined-up benefits system.

Mosley is saying words that ministers cannot yet bring themselves to utter. Not that Mosley seems a radical dissenter; indeed, if anything he has an excessive optimism in the power of Universal Credit (UC) to obliterate the need for food banks and poverty in the UK (food bankers tend to be concerned that the strictures of UC - if it ever arrives - will exacerbate demand for food banks among the poorest claimants).

But he was at least honest - and had listened to his local food bank - and he urged the government (as many Labour MPs have done) to both hold an inquiry into food poverty, and to publish the suppressed Defra report on food aid:

We need a clear picture of the role and extent of the banks and we need to know who uses them and why. Then we can have a debate based on the facts. Otherwise, this important debate will always run the risk of being hijacked by politicians hoping to score cheap political points, which does absolutely nothing to help those in need.

Laura Sandys, Conservative MP for South Thanet, who is one of the best informed MPs on the subject of food policy, said (col 819):

I urge the Government to set up a cross-departmental taskforce to examine the issues involved in food poverty and develop a resilient set of policies to address the problem that food banks are creating. We need to improve housing and our skills base, and enable the food system itself to support communities throughout the country that are finding prices difficult to manage. We have a wide range of volunteers in the food sector who are supporting food banks in the short term, but we must start looking for long-term solutions.

Some Tories get halfway there. John Glen, MP for Salisbury, where the Trussell trust food bank network was founded and has its HQ, acknowledged that benefit delays and sanctions contributed to the rise in food bank use. He admitted that this may be "uncomfortable" for the government. Ultimately, he could not let go of the welfare cuts comfort blanket however: the supposedly "incentivising" effect of punitive benefit cuts for him still appears to justify the sheer misery and humiliation of the ensuing hunger and poverty.

Other Conservatives wrapped themselves in the rather tattered big society flag, unctuously praising local food bank volunteers rather than addressing the principal issues. Nice, but I'm sure even most neutral of food bankers would feel rather patronised. Most, I suspect, are rather alarmed by the rise of food aid (as a Green party research paper demonstrated this week) and would much rather Tory MPs grasped the nettle than tried to depoliticise the issue.

The last word should go to Sandys, who co-chairs the new cross-party group on hunger and food poverty. Sandys outlined an necessary and important starting point for any debate about solving hunger in a wealthy developed country like the UK: food banks don't tackle the underlying causes of food poverty:

We are not here... to celebrate food banks, which are not the answer. They must be seen not as a solution or as something that we want institutionalised, but as a transitional support mechanism for families in stress at particular moments.