radiofree.asia

Food bank expert perfectly tackles vile question from Sky’s Sophy Ridge

Sky News presenter Sophy Ridge just asked a food bank expert if she could call increasing demand for help “a good thing”. But, Trussell communications director Sumi Rabindrakumar dealt with this vile question calmly and clearly.

No Sophy – food banks are NOT a good thing

Addressing Ridge’s apparent doubt about whether high numbers of foodbanks are due to more support being available rather than people actually needing more support, Rabindrakumar said:

The number of foodbanks has stayed relatively the same over recent years. And what we have seen is that level of need increase. And that’s concerning for us.

She added that:

Three in four people turning to foodbanks are disabled. Families with children have consistently needed support. But what we’ve seen in recent years is there have been people who’ve turned to a foodbank for the first time, particularly across the pandemic and with the cost-of-living crisis.

We know that around 30% of people referred to foodbanks are from working households. We’ve seen an increase in people facing housing pressures over the last couple of years turning to foodbanks. So some of that has changed. And it’s that sort of creeping reach of really severe hunger and hardship that is particularly worrying.

As a House of Commons research briefing noted in July 2025:

There has been a general trend of rising demand for food parcels in the last 15 years. Trussell (formerly Trussell Trust), an anti-poverty charity that runs a network of food banks across the UK, distributed around 60,000 emergency food parcels in 2010/11. In 2024/25 this had increased to 2.89 million.

60,000 to 2,890,000 is a massive shift. And over a million of those food parcels went to children in 2024/25.

Politicians chose to make this happen

This growth in food bank demand has coincided directly with politicians making ordinary people pay for an economic crisis that the wealthiest people in society caused.

The dominant austerity politics of neoliberalism have caused massive, unnecessary damage to ordinary people’s wellbeing. The food bank surge is just another clear sign of that. And as always, it’s the people politicians have marginalised or minoritised who pay the biggest price.

Things don’t have to be like this. It is absolutely possible to end poverty and ensure everyone’s wellbeing, when we prioritise that mission over making the richest people even richer. And the more we speak truth to power like Rabindrakumar did, the easier it will be to get the change we all need and deserve.

Featured image via X/Saul Staniforth

By Ed Sykes

This post was originally published on Canary.