Undercover Investigation of food banks in the Daily Mail concludes with this:-
Last night the Trussell Trust said it would investigate allegations of abuse, adding: ‘There is no evidence to suggest that awareness of the food banks is driving an increase in visitors, rather that food bank use is meeting a real and growing need.
I don't think you really need evidence in this matter. There are people out there that if it's worthwhile will lie to get free things, even more so if there's no risk of prosecution from lying, and if you make them aware of more free things, they'll take them.
In the example, someone sees the CAB, spends time doing an interview, gets £40 of food vouchers. I'm guessing it took less than an hour, which is more than most people earn, so if someone had no moral objection to doing it, why wouldn't they do it? Are food banks even running out of food, or has the demand just created even greater supply?
We're looking at something like 800,000 parcels per annum. About the same as the number of burglaries each year, just to give you some perspective on the level of people who will break normal acceptable moral behavior in this country. I'm not saying that some of the rise isn't based on benefits, but it's not exactly challenging to ask if a great deal of these people are just mooching.
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