Emma Revie: Why food banks must never become the norm

The Trussell Trust is arguably one of the charity “success” stories of the austerity years. Against a backdrop of escalating poverty, an obscure outfit giving out bags of food to a handful of hungry people in Wiltshire has grown, in less than a decade, into a highly visible campaigning voice overseeing a national network of more than 1,200 food bank outlets, staffed, largely, by thousands of volunteers, giving out more than a million food parcels each year. Its rapid rise is both impressive and alarming, and Trussell itself realises it has reached a watershed moment: at what point does endless growth represent mission failure for an anti‑poverty charity?

“You get up each day trying to put yourself out of business,” says Trussell’s new chief executive, Emma Revie. But, as she recognises, it’s not quite that easy. The demand for charity food parcels from people with no money to buy food shows little sign of abating. Indeed, as Trussell’s latest research, published on Tuesday, shows, recent months have seen referrals turbo-boosted by the rollout of universal credit. In the year to the end of March 2018 it distributed 1,332,952 three-day emergency food parcels in the UK, a 13% increase on the previous year. Demand for charity food bags grew by 52% in areas where universal credit was fully rolled out.

The seemingly unstoppable rise in demand has created the logistical headache of how to ensure enough food is available in food banks to cope with this new wave of hunger and destitution. But it also raises more profound questions: should Trussell continue to try to run even faster to catch the increasing numbers of people falling through the gaping cracks in the welfare state safety net? Is it in danger of becoming an informal part of a dysfunctional social security system? And, even if it wants to reverse the expansion of recent years, how can it possibly do that without abandoning its core, faith‑driven mission of feeding the poor?

“What I love about the Trussell Trust approach is that there is not an acceptance that we are a safety net that will always be there,” says Revie, who joined the trust this year after a career in youth and overseas aid charities. “We have to be there because the statutory safety net has too many holes in it. We will catch as many as we can, but we want to not be here.” Trussell, she says, will never become “a pseudo-safety net that lets the state off the hook”.

In practice, she accepts the trust cannot unilaterally walk away from its emergency role. Countless studies – and Trussell’s own data – have shown food bank activity broadly follows the dynamic of government welfare cuts. For Trussell to do less ultimately means a more generous social security policy. “What system-wide change needs to take place so that I’m not talking about a 13% increase in the need for emergency food, I’m talking about a 20% decrease? That’s where we are at the moment. I can’t get away from the fact there is still a crisis. But we can’t accept the premise ‘It just is’. How do we stop this?”

Trussell was for some years ostentatiously ignored by Department for Work and Pensions ministers for whom food banks were a political embarrassment; now, says Revie, “very effective communications channels” are in place. Although for years the government has doggedly resisted changing course on welfare, Revie points to Trussell’s recent success – alongside many other organisations – in demonstrating how the flawed design and implementation of universal credit was driving debt, hunger, ill-health and eviction among the poorest claimants. That forced the government to introduce a few relatively minor tweaks to the system. It is too early to tell whether these have had any effect on food bank use. Revie – who says universal credit is “not fit for purpose” as a safety net – is clear that further changes are crucial.

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Trussell’s approach is three-pronged: to support its food bank outlets to provide emergency food; to expand its food bank-based More Than Food services to provide debt, benefits and health advice to tackle some of the underlying issues that create food bank reliance; and, in the form of its forthcoming three-year State of Hunger research project, to build a powerful evidence base to demonstrate what policy changes need to take place to end the need for food banks.

For some campaigners, however, Trussell’s exit strategy looks less credible following its decision earlier this year to accept £9m over three years from the supermarket giant Asda. At a stroke this grows Trussell’s annual income by roughly 50% – not obviously a sign of a charity wishing to abolish itself. The danger, say critics, is that such funding helps prop up food banks – and offers corporate funders an opportunity to “whitewash” their own shortcomings; for example, on paying poor wages. “Experience from the US and Canada has shown that funding from the corporate food industry tends only to further institutionalise charitable food aid [and] does little to address food insecurity,” said the Independent Food Aid Network, which represents some of the hundreds of non-Trussell food banks in the UK.

Revie admits it was a “hard decision” to partner with Asda. But ultimately, she argues, it brings in “transformational” levels of resources, with no strings attached. “The nature of our relationship is that they have asked us what things would really make a difference and they have agreed to fund that. And obviously there is a benefit to Asda from that relationship but we have not signed up to stop speaking truth to power – we will continue to.”

One of the concerns of poverty campaigners is that food banks, five years ago such an appalling novelty, are now becoming grimly accepted as a “normal” part of the austerity scenery. Revie believes that the British public are still discomfited by the idea of food banks, and wants Trussell to ensure this remains so. “It’s really important to continue to be affronted by the fact people are having to go to food banks because they don’t have enough money to buy food,” she says. “We will keep telling that story.”

Curriculum vitae

Age: 42.

Family: Married with two boys.

Lives: Streatham, London.

Education: Crieff high school, Strathclyde University, Glasgow (BA in German and European studies).

Career: 2018- present: chief executive, the Trussell Trust; 2016-18: chief executive, Ambition; 2010-16: chief executive, Reynolds Training; 2005-09: chief executive, Landmark Training; 2000-05: head of supporter and donor services, Tearfund; 1998-2000: customer satisfaction manager (EMEA), IBM.

Public life: Treasurer of Centre for Youth Impact.

Interests: Spending time with family and friends, reading, and walking the dog.