A Conservative MP is under fire after claiming there is no “massive use” for food banks in Britain, and suggesting people use them because they are unable to cook or budget “properly”.

Ashley Cowburn http://www.independent.co.uk 

The MP for Ashfield Lee Anderson made the remarks – labelled “condescending” by unions – as ministers face intense criticism over support available to the most vulnerable amid a cost of living crisis, with soaring energy bills and levels of inflation at a 30-year high.

Earlier, cabinet minister Michael Gove provoked anger as he defended the government’s approach, ruled out demands for an emergency budget, and suggested people “calm down” over the lack of extra financial support before the autumn Budget.

During a Commons debate on the Queen’s Speech, Mr Anderson invited MPs to visit a food bank in his constituency to witness a “brilliant scheme” whereby those in receipt of food parcels have to “register for a budgeting and cooking course”.

“We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget – we can make a meal for about 30p a day – and this is cooking from scratch,” he added.

But when pressed by a Labour MP whether it should be necessary to have food banks in 21st century Britain, Mr Anderson replied: “I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works.

“I think you’ll see first-hand there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly, they can’t cook a meal from scratch, they cannot budget.”

Addressing MPs, he added: “The challenge is there – come. You’re sat there with glazed expressions on your faces, looking at me like I’ve landed from a different planet. Come to a real food bank that’s making a real difference to people’s lives.”

According to the Trussell Trust – the largest network of food bank providers in the UK — the main drivers of food bank use are problems with the benefits system, challenging life experiences, ill-health, or lack of informal or formal support.

Between April 2021 and March 2022, food banks in the organisation’s network distributed more than 2.1 million emergency food parcels – a 14 per cent increase compared to same period in 2019-20.

Sumi Rabindrakumar, head of policy at the Trussell Trust, told The Independent: “Research from the Trussell Trust and other independent organisations is clear – that food bank need in the UK is about lack of income, not food.

“Cooking from scratch won’t help families keep the lights on or put food on the table, if they don’t have enough money in their pockets.”

They added: “Our research shows that people at food banks had on average just £57 a week to live on after housing costs, and no amount of budget management or cooking classes will make this stretch to cover council tax, energy bills, food and all the other essentials we all need to get by.

“That’s why we’re urgently calling on the government to bring benefits in line with the true cost of living and – in the longer term – to introduce a commitment in the benefits system to ensure everyone can afford the essentials we all need to survive.”

Following Mr Anderson’s comments, the SNP’s Joanna Cherry hit back in the Commons, saying: “All of us have food banks in our constituencies, we don’t really need to visit his because we’re perfectly well aware of the requirement for them.

“The requirement for them is not that people don’t know how to cook, but because we have poverty in this country at a scale in this country that should shame his government”.

Wendy Chamberlain, the Liberal Democrats’ welfare spokesperson, said Mr Anderson should apologise for the “shameful” remarks, which were an “insult to millions of hard-working people”.

Karen Buck MP, Labour’s shadow work and pensions minister, said: “In the world where people actually live we now hear daily stories of families going without food and others unable to turn their ovens on in fear of rising energy bills.

“The idea that the problem is cooking skills and not 12 years of government decisions that are pushing people into extreme poverty is beyond belief. Out of touch doesn’t even cover it.”

The row follows confusion over Boris Johnson’s promise on Tuesday that more help would be revealed in “the days to come”, before the Treasury ruled out further short-term financial measures, including an emergency budget.

Mr Gove told BBC Breakfast: “The prime minister was making the point we are constantly looking at ideas to relieve the pressure on people facing incredibly tough times – but that doesn’t amount to an emergency budget.”

The minister added: “It’s example of some commentators trying to take a statement that is commonsensical, turning it into – capital letters – a big news story, when the Treasury quite rightly say, ‘calm down’.”

The levelling up minister also claimed Labour and Lib Dems have no “whizz bang ideas” to address the cost of living crisis – despite rejecting their call for a windfall tax on oil and gas company profits.

A prominent Torbay councillor bullied a council officer and ran “roughshod” over council rules in a Zoom meeting, in scenes reminscient of the notorious ‘Jackie Weaver’ incident at another council.

Joe Ives, local democracy reporter www.radioexe.co.uk 

An investigation into how Hazel Foster (Conservatives, St Marychurch) chaired a new housing review panel meeting has concluded she brought the council into disrepute.

It also found she used her position to bring about an advantage for herself and other Conservatives.

But Cllr Foster believes that council procedures are at fault.

The judgments against her were made at a marathon four-hour standards hearing of Torbay Council on Tuesday [10 May], which considered an independent report into Cllr Foster’s actions at the council’s first meeting of a new housing crisis review panel last September. 

Following an administrative mix-up, the make-up of the housing panel was top heavy with Conservatives, which didn’t reflect the political situation at the council overall. Torbay is run by a coalition of Lib Dems and independents.

Instead the panel mistakenly was listed as comprising three Liberal Democrats, two independents and seven Conservative councillors. 

Committee chair Cllr Foster, who is married to the area’s MP Kevin Foster, refused to accept a change that would have seen it balanced more in line with the overall council.

But some Tory councillors, including Mrs Foster, felt that changing the membership with the Zoom meeting underway was an unfair attempt to move the goalposts after the selection process had finished, and limit Conservative involvement. 

That led to a fierce hour-long debate over panel membership that became so aggravated a council clerk became visibly distressed and left the meeting. Ignoring please from fellow councillors and senior officers, Mrs Foster repeatedly attempted to pass a vote on the membership of the council that had been printed on the original meeting report.

The council’s chief executive Anne-Marie Bond, a lawyer by training, was eventually drafted into the online meeting to advise. 

The meeting eventually went ahead without the panel’s membership being agreed.

However by this stage, the discussion of the Bay’s housing crisis proved a footnote to the bitter argument preceeding it. 

Following the meeting, six councillors – five Liberal Democrats and one Independent – complained, along with the council’s director of place Kevin Mowat, sparking an investigation.

Unlike other public Torbay Council meetings held over Zoom at the time, and despite requests by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, the video has yet to be published.  

Councillors on the standards committee agreed with the independent investigation’s findings that Cllr Foster bullied the officer and that she had ploughed on despite clear signs that her actions had caused upset. 

The officer in question told the investigator she felt bullied and pressured to take on actions that were beyond her remit.

Cllr Foster said: “I’m really really saddened by the clerks’ comments,” and that she holds the officer “in the highest regard.”

She said that initially she had not known the clerk was upset and that, later, when she did realise this, she did not know the reasons why.

Mrs Foster said she felt it was her duty as chair of the panel to continue with the meeting and get the vote on its membership “out the way” regardless.  

After becoming upset, the clerk had turned off her Zoom camera. Cllr Foster told the hearing that this did not indicate to her that something was wrong.

She explained: “As you know during these Zoom meetings there can be many occasions when a screen would go blank. Had somebody come to the door? Had she left the kettle on? There can be many reasons why.”

Councillor Judith Mills (Churston with Galmpton, Independent) pointed out that by this stage several councillors had commented on the clerk’s distress.

Cllr Foster believed the clerk’s behaviour could be because of personal reasons unrelated to the meeting. 

Th at was rejected by the independent investigator, hwo said: “The clerk clearly stated that she was distressed and in difficulty.

“I don’t see how anybody would have not been aware of that.”

Councillor Jermaine Atiya-Alla (Lib Dems, Ellacombe) criticised Cllr Foster, saying: “You did not show any emotional empathy at that time.” 

Cllr Foster countered that she was wronged too. “No empathy was shown to me,” she said.

The scrutiny committee agreed that Cllr Foster had not acted respectfully to other councillors and officers.

The independent investigator said he had watched the “invaluable” Zoom recording of the meeting “many times” and concluded that there were many instances where Cllr Foster had shown disrespect.

He said: “It appeared to me that Cllr Foster didn’t want to hear what anybody had to say.

“Her line was always ‘let’s move to the vote’…there didn’t appear to be any respect for what anybody said, whether it be fellow members or experienced officers in the room.”

Cllr Atiya-Alla argued that Mrs Foster had shown “ a complete lack of respect” to the clerk and other members.  “To me, it seems like you just didn’t care about what anyone else had to say…and you were running roughshod on the rules.”

Foster admitted she was rushing the vote at points but this was because she felt it was very important to move the meeting along.

As reported by the local democracy reporting service in September last year, the meeting had echoes of the infamous ‘Jackie Weaver’ incident at Handforth Parish Council.

Both Torbay council’s scrutiny committee and the independent report found that the episode and its subsequent media coverage brought the council into disrepute. 

Cllr Foster said that the excerpt from an article presented in the report did not represent the full write-up.

The independent investigator disagreed, saying:“ I don’t think it is at all misleading. It is a very poignant point that the article highlights.” He also pointed to the fact that a link to the full article was included in his report.

Cllr Foster said her actions did not harm the reputation of the council. “I believe that when residents here in Torbay – or anywhere – go to the vote they do expect their councillor to stand up to what they feel is correct and the right thing to do”, she argued.

“On this occasion, I was following the agenda and felt that was the right thing to do.”

Cllr Foster denied seeking advantage by forcing through a Conservative majority on the housing review panel and that she had not known proportionality was required.

“I strongly reject this assumption”, she continued. “I find that it is a completely a matter of opinion. [There] is no factual evidence.”

She said the claims were “a slur” on her character and that as no formal decisions were made by the panel, there was no advantage to be gained by a  Tory majority.

The independent investigator rejected that, noting the panel would have had influence and so it would have been advantageous to Cllr Foster for the panel to be disproportionately made up of Conservatives.

The complainants had initially suggested that Cllr Foster had attempted to compromise the impartiality of those who work for, or on behalf of the council and that she had wasted the resources of the council.

In the end, the scrutiny committee and the independent investigator agreed she had not.

Nevertheless, the scrutiny committee did find that Cllr Foster’s breaches of the code of conduct elsewhere required significant sanctions. 

Cllr Foster was told that she must carry out ‘acceptable behaviour training,’ and that she write an apology letter to the clerk affected by her behaviour, the head of governance and the council’s director of place.

She must also make an unequivocal apology for her conduct at a meeting of the full council on Thursday 21 July.

The committee said the leader of the council, Steve Darling (Lib Dems, Barton with Watcombe) should be “recommended to consider” suspending Cllr Foster from her post as the council’s domestic abuse and sexual violence champion until her acceptable behaviour training is completed.

It was also decided that the committee would recommend to the leader of the Conservative group, David Thomas (Preston), that Cllr Foster should be suspended from the committees she serves on, and from outside bodies at which she represents the council. 

However Cllr Foster will be allowed to carry on as a councillor representing St Marychurch.

Speaking after the meeting, Cllr Foster accepted she had made mistakes although wasn’t entirely in agreement with the hearing’s findings.

 “I’m disappointed it’s come to this”, she said.

“I see it was all about a procedure that had failed prior to the meeting that put me in that unfortunate position that I was asked to tell five councillors [the extra Tory members] that they couldn’t be on that committee.

“I felt that was unfortunate that the procedure had left me in that position.”

She said she hoped the council would make changes to the way meetings are conducted so no one else would be placed in a similar position to her in the future.

She disagreed with the standards committee’s finding that she had used her position as committee chair for her own advantage.

Regarding the clerk who was upset, she said: “I completely apologise. I have a lot of respect for her. She’s an excellent officer and I will completely apologise for my actions or anything I said that made her feel that she was upset and had to leave the meeting.”

Cllr Foster said she will abide by the sanctions decided upon by the scrutiny committee. 

Separately, Conservative group leader councillor David Thomas faces a hearing into allegations regarding his own behaviour at the same meeting.

An independent report has concluded that he broke the council’s code of conduct twice, in attempting to use his position improperly to secure an advantage or disadvantage and bringing his office or the council into disrepute.

Cllr Thomas’ hearing will be held this Friday.

“Our rivers are in a poor state, bird and other species numbers are in serious decline, poor air quality threatens the health of many, and our seas and sea floor are not managed sustainably.”

www.impartialreporter.com 

Toxic air that harms health, and water pollution from sewage and farming must be tackled as urgent priorities, the new environmental watchdog has warned.

Overfishing and damage to sea floors from trawling, loss of natural habitats, and degraded soils must also be urgently dealt with by the Government, the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) urges in its first report.

OEP chairwoman Dame Glenys Stacey said that, despite ambition by the Government, the environment is in a “precarious” state and suffering worrying and persistent declines in air and water quality, species and habitats.

The report calls for the Government to make a comprehensive “stocktake” of the state of the natural world, set out ambitious legal targets and coherent action, and to make the environment a priority across all departments.

Addressing the crisis in England’s air, water, landscapes and seas should have the same level of cross-government support and urgency as climate efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions to net zero, it urges.

The OEP is also calling on the Government to reverse the decline in funding for monitoring the state of the environment over the last decade – but does not call for more resources overall to tackling the environmental crisis.

The watchdog was set up as part of the post-Brexit regime for managing England’s environment, with a role for monitoring progress on reversing harm to the natural world and acting as a regulator on green laws.

Its first monitoring report on the Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan, announced in 2018, warns that, while the plans for the natural world are ambitious, progress on delivering them has been too slow.

It warns of “tipping points” where slow, persistent declines in nature become catastrophic – such as setting fishing limits above scientific advice, which can lead to fish stock crashes, and the continued damage to the seabed, which destroys the marine ecosystem.

Failing to prioritise these issues and address them before the tipping points are reached will make it much harder to reverse the declines, Dame Glenys said.

And she said: “The 25 Year Environment Plan was an ambitious attempt to confront the challenges facing the environment, yet we continue to see worrying and persistent trends of environmental decline.

“Our rivers are in a poor state, bird and other species numbers are in serious decline, poor air quality threatens the health of many, and our seas and sea floor are not managed sustainably.”

Turning the situation around will not be easy, she acknowledged, but urged the Government to set a clear and ambitious vision for the environment which is prioritised across all departments.

“All of us have an inarguable dependency on the environment, and its precarious state should be a matter of concern for all of Government and a national priority,” she warned.

A decade ago the Conservative Government said it wanted to leave the natural world in England in a better state for future generations than it found it, and in 2018 produced the 25 Year Environment Plan with dozens of measures across 10 areas from clean air and water to waste, wildlife and landscapes.

Last year it also passed the Environment Act, which will allow for setting new targets in areas including curbing air pollution, and is set to produce a new Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP) under the Act next year.

The OEP report highlights a series of areas which it thinks the Government should prioritise and take immediate action on, including cutting air pollutants that cause tens of thousands of early deaths a year.

Tackling water pollution in rivers, lakes and streams from treated sewage and agricultural run-off from livestock and arable farms should also be a priority.

England’s seas need urgent action to halt overfishing, which affects around a third of stocks in UK waters, and to prevent the damage caused by fishing gear trawled over the seabed which removes the plant and animal life living there.

On land, loss of habitat caused by intensification of agriculture and urbanisation must be tackled, as well as erosion and degraded soils, which causes flooding, releases carbon and puts costs on farming.

The report calls on the Government to understand the drivers of environmental decline, create a vision to tackle the crisis, set ambitious targets, implement coherent strategy and policy, ensure good governance and monitoring, assessment and reporting on progress.

Environment minister Rebecca Pow said: “We welcome this report, which acknowledges that our Environment Act gives us new tools to make a real difference to our environment, putting it at the heart of government and transitioning us to a sustainable future with nature on the road to recovery during this decade.

“Six months on from the Act gaining royal assent, we are currently consulting on legally binding environmental targets which include a world-leading target to halt species decline by 2030.

“We have launched a consultation to deliver the largest programme in history to tackle storm sewage discharges and we have taken action to transform the way that we deal with waste.”

Overdoses on the “Magic Sauce” and uses American and Scouse accents in bizarre interview

“There will also be a new duty on the government to set “levelling up missions” and report on whether they have been accomplished. The law to make everything better for everyone will work by placing a statutory obligation on the government to explain how things are getting better.

Johnson is reduced to these inanities because the most powerful faction among his MPs will not, as a point of ideological principle, countenance anything that seriously interferes with the accrual of wealth and privilege to those who already have them. Levelling up has hit the same obstacle that derailed David Cameron’s “big society” agenda. That too was conceived as a way to rehabilitate unhappy parts of the country without recourse to any of the explicit financial redistribution that Thatcherite Tories despise as socialism.”

From: Inane and Orwellian: a Queen’s speech to improve the life of Boris Johnson 

Rafael Behr www.theguardian.com