Renfrewshire in-work poverty so prevalent food bank launches evening service

In-work poverty is so severe that a Renfrewshire charity has launched an evening outlet to hand over food to people finishing a hard day’s work.

Renfrewshire Foodbank opened its first evening distribution centre last Wednesday after cash-strapped families said they couldn’t usually access the service because they were working during the day.

Demand for the service is a damning indictment of the UK Government’s ethos that it “pays to work”, Mhairi Black MP has said, as more and more households grapple with the cost-of-living crisis.

The news comes as the number of food parcels dished out by the food bank surpassed the 10,000 mark for the first time in 2023.

The organisation provided food for 10,099 people – 7,057 adults and 3,042 children. Of these, around 15 per cent were from working households.

And an increase has been recorded in the first few months of 2024, the food bank revealed.

It means the lifeline charity has, on average, handed out around 841 three-day emergency food parcels each month of the past year.

Crystal Clayton, manager of Renfrewshire Foodbank, told the Paisley Daily Express the charity is trialling evening distributions of food parcels due to a surge in demand.

“We are trialling an evening distribution on a Wednesday evening between 5pm and 7pm to make our service more accessible to those who are working,” she said.

“We have seen an increase in the number of working people accessing our service, therefore we are introducing an evening session one day a week.

“We hope that this will alleviate the stress and struggles of those who can not access us during our normal operating hours.”

Paisley and Renfrewshire South SNP MP Mhairi Black said the fact that working people in Renfrewshire were seeking the support of food banks “is a sorry state of affairs”.

She said: “The cost of living has continued to increase while wages have stagnated in the UK. Food prices have gone up, utility bills have gone up and the rate of inflation remains unrealistic to manage for working people.

“People in work are having to choose between heating their homes or eating dinner. People who are going to work are needing to use the foodbank in Renfrewshire and this is a sorry state of affairs.

“I have always said I want to live in a place where we don’t need food banks but the reality is that we need them more than ever in Renfrewshire.

“The UK establishment have built an entire ethos around a ‘working pays’ attitude and have pushed this degrading ‘benefit scroungers’ mindset onto people. People need to have incentive to go out and work, not to go to work to worry about the most basic of necessities such as eating food.

“The reality is that people need a realistic income, wages need to go up while prices come down. That’s on both the UK Government and the billions of pounds for profit companies such as the energy giants and supermarket chains to fix.

“Meanwhile, it will continue to be normal working people who feel the brunt of all of this.”

Scottish Labour MSP Paul O’Kane claims his party would be the one to fix this scandal. He said: “The rising demand on food banks is a bitter reminder of just how badly Scots have been let down by our two governments. It shouldn’t be possible for a working person to require a food bank yet under the SNP and the Tories it has become so.

“Scottish Labour has the policies that will make in-work poverty a thing of the past and they include banning zero hour contracts, outlawing the disgraceful practice of fire and rehire, abolishing the Tories’ shameful anti-strike laws and introducing a real living wage that’s extended to all adults and expanding access to sick pay.

“These policies are about making work pay and offering people the certainty that they if they are working they cannot fall into poverty.”

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