Queues outside food banks grow longer as rich get richer in Britain

It is one of the favourite questions journalists ask politicians, to check if they are really engaged with the realities of everyday life: ‘Do you know the price of a pint of milk?’ Not every prime minister, minister or leader asked this question – or a variant of it: the price of bread or fuel – gets it right. Some squirm live on air and trip, like former US President George Bush, former British Prime Minister David Cameron, or the former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. But Dominic Raab, deputy prime minister, who has often been the subject of sharp words from political sketch writers and columnists, got it right on BBC Breakfast the other day, and in fact turned the tables by asking the presenter if he knew the price of unleaded petrol.

Raab is one of the rare politicians to pass the ‘pint of milk’ test, but many in Britain today believe that his government is not as engaged with the realities of the ever-rising cost of living, now widely described as a ‘crisis’. Billions of pounds of new funding have been allocated to deal with the rising energy, food and other prices, but the scale of the crisis in one of the world’s richest countries is such that ministers admit that not everyone will benefit from the funding.

Walking along the High Street in East Ham recently I was struck by a long queue that wound long into a side road. Standing in queues may seem to come naturally to the Brits, but this one looked different: it was diverse, included entire families, waiting patiently, the queue moving along slowly. They were waiting before a ‘food bank’, a place where food parcels and other essential items are given away for free to families struggling to meet basic needs, reflecting the growing phenomenon of urban poverty and economic inequality in Britain. There are over 2,000 such food banks across Britain; the Trussell Trust, a charity organisation that opened its first food bank in 2000, operates over half of them. The Covid-19 pandemic has also led to an increase in food bank usage, particularly among families with children.

This context of deprivation stands in sharp contrast with the latest listing of The Sunday Times Rich List, which included, for the first time, Chancellor Rishi Sunak and wife Akshata Murthy (placed at number 222). The recent row over Murthy’s tax status and Sunak receiving a fixed penalty notice from the police for partying in Downing Street may have eviscerated his chances to be the next prime minister (to the glee of some in the ruling party), but the larger picture presented by the rich list is stark. The 250 richest people in the United Kingdom include a record 177 billionaires. Overall, the richest individuals and families are worth £711 billion, an 8 per cent rise on last year’s £658 billion, which comes amid the growing cost of living crisis, with UK inflation rising sharply to 9 per cent in the year to April.

The writer is a senior journalist based in the UK