Food Insecurity

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:14 pm on 2 February 2021.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:14, 2 February 2021

Well, Llywydd, I think David Melding makes a very important point that the natural human instinct is to share food and to use the sharing of food as the basis for social interaction. I'm sure I'm not the only Member of the Senedd who ate a virtual Christmas dinner this year with family members far away in Wales, and great as it is to see people even in that way, it's no substitute for what David Melding talked about—about people getting around the table together and sharing a meal. But I think his first example—what he talked about in relation to food co-operatives—is very important. The pantry scheme that I referred to, answering Jenny Rathbone, is just an example of that. Everybody pays £5 into the scheme and then is able to draw food out of the collective stock.

And while foodbanks do a fantastic job, sad as it is to require that job to be done, what the pantry scheme does is to get over that sense that people who use foodbanks have of being dependent on them, of being in a client relationship. With the pantry, you're a member, as you are in a co-op, and you've paid in and you take out of it by right, and that changes the whole dynamic. And more developments of that sort would have benefits of the sort that David Melding referred to, but they would have wider benefits as well in giving people that sense of social worth and dignity, which we, I know, would both wish to see.