Food poverty is a political issue - but we mustn't allow foodbanks to become a political football

I may be the Scotland Network Manager for The Trussell Trust but Ally and I interact like old acquaintances because we have one thing in common - we have both used a foodbank. Sensing his apprehension that day, I congratulated his bravery for coming along and recounted my own foodbank experience, much to his surprise. I told him about the time I, as a struggling part-timer with a young wife, walked up to an ATM only to discover I did not have enough money in my bank account to buy toilet roll. At that point, I was the manager of Dundee foodbank and had to use the service I was running just to survive. From that moment, the invisible client-worker barrier crumbled and we communicated as equals.

Last Monday, Ally and I met in a coffee shop in Dennistoun and he talked me through the circumstances that led to him using the foodbank. Like many, Ally talks about the paradox of emotions - the apprehension you feel as you approach the threshold of the foodbank door and the incredible warmth you experience on the other side. "I was upset and stressed," he says, "Not just for the lack of food, but also for the lack of money to pay the bills. Before going to the foodbank I felt a complete failure, as if I was absolutely at the bottom for the first time in my life. I nearly buckled under the pressure."

Despite talk of economic growth, there is no doubt the improvements are not being felt where they are most needed. In the last year, we have seen quarterly economic growth dwarfed by food and fuel price rises and, in the last five years, we have seen the deficit halved but the national debt increase by a third. Families are feeling financial fatigue as the bones of our economy continue to creak and efforts to resurface the road to recovery are ongoing.

The Trussell Trust has been consistent in calling for policy-makers, from across the spectrum, to prioritise the reduction of food poverty in the run up to, and beyond, the General Election. On a positive note, poverty and foodbanks are on the political radar more than ever.

Not all parties have yet revealed their pre-election pledges, but already foodbanks have featured in the Conservative, Labour, and Green Party, as well as UKIP and Plaid Cymru, manifestos. Foodbanks were first raised as an electoral issue in the recent televised interview between Jeremy Paxman and David Cameron, when the first question directed at the Prime Minister related to foodbank use. There have been additional references since.

This is all a far cry from the establishment of the first foodbank of its kind, set up by Paddy Henderson and operating from a garden shed in Salisbury 15 years ago, resourced by a legacy from his late mother-in-law. In Scotland, The Trussell Trust has grown exponentially since then, setting up its first Scottish foodbank in Inverness in 2005 and growing to 50 foodbanks with over 80 distribution centres in 27 of the 32 local authority areas. In the first six months of the 2014/15 financial year, we provided food to more than 50,000 people in Scotland - the equivalent of Hampden Park sold out - and, this week, we will be releasing figures concerning foodbank use for the rest of the year.

This is not cause for celebration but nor is it, entirely, cause for commiseration. We should celebrate any outpouring of human kindness as communities pull together, in lean times, to respond to a need. What we do not celebrate is food poverty and it's important to avoid using the term "foodbanks" in a derogatory fashion. This was my argument when I participated in a recent conference in the Pearce Institute, Govan, which was unfortunately titled "Beyond Foodbanks". I suggested that "Beyond Food Poverty" may have been better title given that food poverty, rather than foodbanks, should be the focus of our collective concern.

Criticising foodbanks alienates your greatest potential allies in the effort to tackle food poverty. It also increases the embarrassment and stigma surrounding the use of these facilities.

Celebrating the launch of a foodbank is not the same as celebrating the need that demands their existence. Without them, people would be threatened by starvation, on the cusp of malnutrition and pushed to the precipice of suicide.

When you meet the family from Paisley who went from middle-class to malnutrition and descended into mental ill health or the young lady from Dundee who went from being the benefactor to becoming a beneficiary and wanted to take her own life to the young man from Edinburgh who went from welfare to workfare to welfare again and was left in utter despair, you cannot remain silent and you cannot curtail your effort until radical change occurs.

As a charity willing to engage with all decision-makers across the political spectrum, we are keen to keep food poverty on the political radar if we are ever to positively influence the economic landscape for men, women and children in Scotland. What makes The Trussell Trust different is that we do not, unlike Canada and parts of North America, want to become Government-funded subsidiaries of the state who weld foodbanks into the infrastructure of welfare provision. We believe that real power lies within communities and that our elected representatives can work hand-in-hand with us towards change. In a Herald column last February, Colette Douglas Home described me as someone "whose ambition is to be unemployed". If radical change can be achieved and the need for foodbanks disappears, I will become surplus to requirements and that would be a welcome result.

As a colleague helpfully reminded me last week, poverty is political but it is not, and here is the crucial distinction, party political. We cannot get away from the fact that the rise in food and fuel costs, insecure employment for those in work, minimal employment opportunities for those seeking work and welfare reform are issues our elected representatives have some power to influence.

It is a jarring position for those of us working in apolitical settings when, in an odd sense, we are keen for food poverty to be debated by politicians, raised in parliamentary questions and considered as a route to creative policy development but we want to avoid food poverty being co-opted in a partisan manner. It is so important to understand that when elected officials politicise food poverty, as an issue, it can enable movement toward productive policy development but when we are politicised, as the people who experience food poverty, it jeopardises our dignity.

Ally clearly feels that. He is a grafter with a clear work ethic but only a few years ago he was unemployed, seeking work and volunteered himself to go on a Mandatory Work Placement. Ally is currently on what some politicians have described as an "exploitative" zero-hours contract but he clearly questions whether it is more exploitative to politicise the issue for personal gain and use the poor as pawns in party political discourse. "It is disingenuous to lump them all together to justify your approach as a party," he says. "The one thing I want politicians to do is propagandise against the demonisation of the poor. It's time to push the boat out for those in need and present a positive image instead."

A productive form of political engagement occurred when I attended the Welfare Reform Committee last March, and encouraged all elected members to visit foodbanks but, specifically, to prioritise conversations with those using the service. One accepted the challenge. We agreed on a date and I escorted him to his local foodbank. That day, he met five people at the foodbank and four of them were from working households. He was moved, but also so unsettled by what we had heard that he took up two of the stories (with his parliamentary secretary scribbling down notes), one about a delayed wage and one about unpaid statutory sick pay. Furthermore, he raised a parliamentary question the following week about in-work poverty.

So, in the last fortnight, what have the spokespeople from Scotland's six parties with elected representation over three parliaments said about foodbanks and, more importantly, how has the tone and content of the dialogue made those who use our foodbanks feel?

o SNP leader and First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, visited New Lanark last week and said it is "nothing short of a disgrace" that policy created at Westminster causes so many children to experience poverty and forces so many to foodbanks.

o On the BBC televised Scottish Leaders' Debate, Scottish Labour Party leader Jim Murphy talked about investing £175 million to get rid of the need for foodbanks but not foodbanks themselves.

o When questioned on the recent STV televised Scotland Debates about the increasing use of foodbanks and the impact of unfair sanctions upon individuals, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie used the word "terrible" to describe the extensive use of foodbanks.

o When asked on the Scotland 2015 Poverty Debate about the increasing number of foodbanks, Scottish Conservative Highlands and Islands MSP, Mary Scanlon, admitted we need even more foodbanks to support people out of poverty.

o Responding to a question around foodbanks on the same televised debate, Patrick Harvie, the co-convenor of the Scottish Green Party, said GDP and average income measures can tell you how rich a country is but not how equitable is the redistribution of that wealth.

o During a discussion on the televised Scottish Leaders' Debate about poverty, David Coburn, the Ukip MEP for Scotland, indicated that mass immigration depresses wages which is a primary reason why we have foodbanks.

I will leave it for you to decide the quality of the debate thus far. What I will say is, words that describe the negative nature of how many people use foodbanks and proposals to end their existence only exacerbate the shame and embarrassment felt by the more politically-engaged people coming to our foodbanks and who overhear these statements.

Describing the foodbank experience, Ally said: "To meet people at the foodbank who have been where you have been - it takes that sense of [you] feeling way down at the bottom while they're at the top, away. I was allowed to speak and was being heard - that helped decrease the sense of isolation I carried with me. Going to a foodbank removes your sense of lost humanity - that's love."

When I ask Ally to cite one word to capture his foodbank experience, he paused, and said: "Solidarity."

Ewan Gurr is Scotland Network Manager of The Trussell Trust

www.trusselltrust.org