Twenty years ago, an American supermarket, discovering that its own low-paid employees needed to use a food bank, stopped supplying that food bank with food. Old traditions die hard. Here, the Department for Work and Pensions is to cease referring benefit claimants to food banks because it “breaches data privacy law” (Jobcentres told to stop referring benefit claimants to food banks, 16 February).
Some food banks will no longer supply some families with food. The logic of DWP’s position is that all of the other agencies involved in referral – social services, charities and health centres – must also be in breach of data protection regulation.
I’m in favour of food banks helping fewer people, even closing down – but only when no longer needed. A record 3 million people used them in 2022-23, as the plight of the poorest got worse. The DWP’s decision is callous and shortsighted; those suffering the worst excesses of poverty will suffer even more.
This raises some questions: what are data regulations for? In whose interests should the DWP be operating? Data regulations are not there to prevent data being used, with the subject’s consent, to deliver beneficial outcomes to the subject. If the DWP can find a single instance of a benefit claimant denying them permission to use their data for the purpose of referral to a food bank then I will be both impressed and incredulous. Does the information commissioner have a view? (I speak as a former member of the DWP select committee.)
I hope that the DWP will reconsider, ministers will step in, and public opinion will state categorically that the DWP has an obligation to help those in need the most. Unfortunately, I have little confidence that the first two of these hopes will be met.
Tom Levitt
Chair of trustees, Fair Credit Charity
