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Anglican bishops: Welfare reforms creating 'national crisis' of hunger
A group of 27 Anglican bishops have attacked the government’s welfare reforms for creating a ‘national crisis’ of hunger.
The bishops join Methodist, Quaker and other Christian leaders in signing a joint letter to the Daily Mirror condemning welfare reform.
They say there ‘is an acute moral imperative to act’ and say that more than half those using food banks do so because of ‘cutbacks to and failures in the benefit system’.
The letter follows Britain’s leading Catholic, Cardinal Vincent Nicholas, branding welfare cuts ‘an absolute disgrace’.
It claims that half a million people have visited food banks since Easter, with 5,500 admitted to hospital for malnutrition.
The religious leaders blame soaring food prices and low wages as well as welfare reform.
‘We often hear talk of hard choices. Surely few can be harder than that faced by the tens of thousands of older people who must “heat or eat” each winter, harder than those faced by families whose wages have stayed flat while food prices have gone up 30 per cent in just five years,’ the letter said.
‘Yet beyond even this we must, as a society, face up to the fact that over half of people using food banks have been put in that situation by cutbacks to and failures in the benefit system, whether it be payment delays or punitive sanctions.’
Prime minister David Cameron responded to Cardinal Nicholas’ attack by claiming his welfare reform programme was a ‘moral mission’ that ‘gave people hope’.
