Ian Bell: Food for thought as austerity drives more people to food banks

Given the condition of the eurozone, that might not be saying much. Equally, given that it has taken the best part of five brutal years for George Osborne's "long-term plan" to get us to this point, excitement is liable to be muted.

Despite his promises and predictions, the Chancellor is still responsible for a budget deficit of just over £91 billion. The UK still has a towering £1.45 trillion mountain of debt. Mr Osborne's response, as ever, is another programme of spending cuts, this one described by the otherwise-venerated Institute for Fiscal Studies as "colossal".

It wasn't supposed to be this way, least of all by the Chancellor's reckoning. GDP growth, at an annualised 2.8 per cent, is better than respectable in the present global climate. Those inflation and joblessness numbers are not Mr Osborne's doing, but the fact won't prevent him from claiming credit. By December, the Office for National Statistics was even able to report that, finally, wages had grown by 1.6 per cent from a year earlier in the August to October period.

But something's not right. Or rather, if we're generous, something's not right yet. Those five lost years have taken their toll on most earners. The Chancellor cannot claim they have made their sacrifices for the sake of the deficit because, notoriously, it persists. Falling oil revenues, a cause for perverse celebration in some quarters, are not going to help matters. But at least half of the revenues Mr Osborne expected have gone missing. The reason is income tax receipts.

Dull numbers don't mean much to people struggling to get by. The income tax numbers mean a lot to the Treasury, however, and they symbolise the task facing the people who run food banks. Under Mr Osborne's vaunted long-term plan, the UK finds itself in a bizarre situation: growth up, unemployment down, and increasing numbers of people in need of three-day emergency food supplies. Meanwhile, the Office for Budget Responsibility has taken to treating low wages as one of those "structural" changes that bewitch economists.

A BBC survey of people making use of the Trussell Trust's 48 food banks in Scotland last month is clear enough. Even on a provisional estimate, the numbers were up again: 10,489 people referred, a 13 per cent increase on December 2013. Of these, one third reported that their need had less to do with the usual, disgraceful benefit payment delays and everything to do with low incomes. Close to 10,500 people, children among them, didn't have enough money in the house for food.

It is now almost needless to say that many of these families have someone in work, each contributing their statistic to Mr Osborne's employment miracle. According to charity workers, they are choosing between food, heating and paying the rent. Their employment, in our zero-hours world, is typically "unstable". For them, in growing numbers, the Chancellor's long-term plan is a long way from fruition while he plots to withdraw still more billions from the public realm for the sake of the slowest recovery Britain has witnessed.

You can stack up statistics. Last summer we heard that 820,000 Scots were living in relative poverty in 2012-13, a 110,000 increase on the year before. There were 180,000 children in the July total, a 15 per cent increase. If the experience of the Trussell Trust last month is anything to go by, the 2014 numbers are unlikely to show an improvement. For now, the Westminster Government points only to the unemployment figures and claims that Universal Credit will, in due course, help matters.

Perhaps it will. It will not restore five lost years to all those children, however, or enable their parents to listen to all of Mr Osborne's boasts without wincing. It will not persuade them that the Chancellor's promised £33bn spending cuts (if re-elected), or Labour's equivalent devotion to fiscal responsibility, can help matters. Those highly-satisfactory GDP figures belong to another reality entirely.

Food banks do what they can with the resources they have. What they offer is, in essence, emergency aid. But last August, just as the Coalition Government had begun to spread the glad tidings of an economic plan bearing fruit, the Faculty of Public Health was recording an increase in malnutrition. As John Middleton, the body's vice-president put it, "rickets and other manifestations of extreme poor diet" were becoming apparent.

Rickets. In Britain in the twenty first century. Supermarket price wars and low inflation might have arrived a little late for some people. In August, as though to underline the faculty's findings, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Durham, Ron Hogg, asserted that some were resorting to crime "simply to live".

A minority, no doubt. No doubt Mr Osborne would add, in his Conservative way, that a rising tide lifts all boats. Last week in the Commons the Chancellor's boss, David Cameron, said during Prime Minister's Questions that he was in favour of the Living Wage. He did not expatiate on the point, least of all by explaining how he would promote, or - heaven and tame economists forbid - enforce the wage. Instead, pathetic fines are imposed on a few employers who have failed to pay even the national minimum.

At the last count, 52 per cent of working-age adults and 60 per cent of children in poverty were to be found in households with at least one employed member. The food bank figures make the obvious point: in modern Britain you can hold down a job, get whatever support the state is prepared to provide, and still lack the income to feed a family. Living off Mr Osborne's daydreams is tricky, meanwhile.

There are no accidents in this. The public purse was emptied to pay for the banking crash. Too many employers then exploited the aftermath of the debacle to hold down or cut wages. There might have been a slight "average" improvement recently - does one include bonuses in the calculations? - but the food banks and the Chancellor's miserable income tax receipts tell the story. Too many of those new jobs of which Mr Osborne boasts don't pay decent wages.

Coalition ministers don't quibble much over the quality of the employment on offer. This is especially true of young workers. Just getting the dole figures down counts first and last for politicians who will otherwise give you a fine speech on an exporting "knowledge economy". The real human costs of the past five years and a deficit reduction drive that has missed every target have not yet to be counted.

To some ears, relative poverty doesn't sound so bad. All things are relative, after all. But those who attempt to survive on 60 per cent of average household incomes - the usual benchmark - know better. The food banks know better. If the first duty of government is to protect its citizens, as Mr Cameron is fond of saying, the duty is not being met.