By Gregor Duncan
As Bishop of Glasgow and Galloway I am responsible for more than 60 episcopal churches that cover an area stretching from the Vale of Leven in the north to the Mull of Galloway in the south. The Diocese includes East and West Dunbartonshire, North and South Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, North and South Ayrshire, Dumfries and Galloway and Glasgow itself. It encompasses some of the most prosperous areas of Scotland and some of the most deprived, both rural and urban, and much in between.
Food banks exist all over this cross-section of Scotland, in poor, middling and well-heeled areas. Trussell Trust figures indicate that, in 2011, it had one food bank in Scotland and by 2014 there were 48, showing faster growth in the number north of the Border than elsewhere in the UK.
Many of our churches, either on their own or in partnership with other churches and agencies, support the vital resource of providing food banks. We do this because we believe it is an imperative of our Christian faith to care for those in desperate need in our midst, regardless of the reasons for their plight, and to do that in practical ways. All of this is good and I’m glad we are doing it; it is what should be done. It would be shocking if we did not respond in this way.
But it is equally shocking that we have to be doing this kind of work. Britain remains one of the wealthiest nations on this earth yet significant numbers of our fellow citizens, many of whom are in employment, can feed themselves and their dependents only by resorting to food banks. Thank God that they can, but we should be ashamed that they have to. Those we charge with governing this immensely rich nation should be ashamed that people do not earn enough in employment, or receive sufficiently decent out-of-work benefits to be able to feed themselves and their families.
There is much talk, and rightly so, about the Minimum Wage and the Living Wage and the levels at which they might appropriately be set. There is also much talk, again rightly so, about the growing gap between rich and poor. The Government claims that it aims for a “low-welfare, high-wage” economy. It claims that it does not wish to see welfare payments subsidising low pay. It wants work to pay and always to be more attractive than life on benefits. It wants to reward people who do “the right thing”, the “hard-working families”.
However, much of this is open to the accusation of being little more than fashionable political catchphrases and empty claims when the reality is that renewed economic growth is not leading to the disappearance of food banks. Rather, it seems, they are on the way to becoming a permanent part of the fabric of what looks like an increasingly fractured and fractious society. Wages fairly earned and benefits fairly qualified for should be at levels that can enable people to provide for themselves so that they have a decent share in, and access to, the common goods of society. Proper food, housing and clothing are the absolute minimum among these, without the need to resort to charity and the humiliation that can bring. The fact that, in the midst of wealth and plenty, this is simply not so for many people is a national shame and scandal.
Many people of goodwill, people of many faiths among them, respond to this on more than one level. Yes, we support our local food banks as best we can. But yes, even while doing that, on another level, we loudly challenge the state of affairs in our society that gives rise to the need for such arrangements in the first place.
My mother, who died in 2009 at the age of 95, was brought up in Clydebank. I remember that, when very high levels of unemployment returned to the UK in the 1980s, levels to which we have now become inured, she said that she had never thought to live to see such things again. Were she alive today I think she would be saying much the same about food banks.
The Rt Rev Dr Gregor Duncan is Bishop of Glasgow and Galloway.
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