Jack Monroe slams Tory MP’s ‘abhorrent’ food bank comments

11 May 2022, 16:46 | Updated: 11 May 2022, 17:01

Lee Anderson MP invited MPs to visit his constituency’s food bank. Picture: LBC/Screenshot

The food campaigner attacked Lee Anderson MP’s ‘disgusting’ praise for a food bank which has a compulsory cooking and budgeting class for those accepting food parcels.

Conservative MP for Ashfield Lee Anderson drew outrage in the House of Commons after telling colleagues of the “brilliant scheme” his local food bank has where people taking parcels have to sign up for cooking and budgeting lessons.

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“It’s tedious how often I have to have this conversation with various Conservative MPs who’ve said the latest ill-thought through and frankly atrocious thing about people living in poverty”, food campaigner Jack Monroe told Eddie Mair.

Mr Anderson argued that the UK doesn’t have an issue with food poverty as such, stating that the issue lies in the life skills of Brits.

“We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly, they cannot cook a meal from scratch” the MP told the House.

The food campaigner countered: “It’s not a lack of skills or knowledge that is causing people to struggle in food poverty in this country…it’s the lack of resources, it’s the lack of finances.”

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“It’s not that people don’t know what to do with a bag of pasta, it’s that they don’t have the 29p to buy it in the first place.”

The food campaigner took particular exception to Mr Anderson’s food bank’s strategy, calling their policy “abhorrent.”

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“Helping somebody conditional on them saying ‘you know what, I’m a terrible kind of poor person, this is all my own fault, please teach me how to be better at being poor’, is disgusting, actually”, they argued.

Jack Monroe concluded with a final shot at Mr Anderson’s praise for his food bank.

“It’s not brilliant. In his own constituency one in three live in poverty…I don’t think he’s the one to be touting the solution.”