The rise of food banks is the result of "poor people maximising their economic choices" and has not been caused by tougher rules over benefit payments, a senior UK Government civil servant has told MSPs.
Neil Couling, work services director at the Department for Work and Pensions, also told Holyrood's Welfare Reform Committee that many people who face benefit sanctions "welcome the jolt" it can give them.
Claimants can have their jobseeker's allowance suspended if they have failed to do enough to find work, turn down jobs offered to them or fail to turn up to appointments after a tougher sanctions regime was introduced in October 2012.
Claims that these new sanctions and other changes to welfare are fuelling demand for food banks were rejected by Mr Couling.
"My view, very clearly, is that this is a supply-led growth going on, and it will continue to grow over the years ahead, whatever the path of welfare policies are, because we live in a society where there are poor people and rich people, and people will maximise their economic choices. That's just how economies work," he said.
Earlier, Dr John Ip, a GP and member of the British Medical Association, told the committee that food banks are increasing their services due to rising demand while at a previous meeting MSPs heard the same views from charities operating the services.
SNP committee member Kevin Stewart said Mr Couling's claim was "complete and utter nonsense".
During heated exchanges, Mr Stewart said: "I would suggest that you go and speak to folk at food banks like I have done — the workers, the volunteers and those folks who are presenting themselves — who without doubt are facing major difficulties in their lives, often due to sanctioning."
Commenting on the use of sanctions, Mr Couling said: "My experience is that many benefit recipients welcome the jolt that the sanctions can give to them."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article