Thank you very much. Thank you very much for mentioning these people who are unable to turn on the cooker, because that’s something that I was told about when I visited the Building Communities Trust project up in Trowbridge and St Mellons recently—that some people are having to spend so much money on heating their damp homes that they don’t have enough money to pay for the cooker. I’m really worried about that, but also wanting to know a great deal more, because I think, whilst the oven is very expensive, turning on a cooker really isn’t using up that much gas or electric, and I really want to unpick this problem, because, really, people are not feeding themselves properly in the winter months if they can’t cook and eat a hot meal.

It really is a very, very significant issue, and one that I feel we really do need to unpick, because fast food is very expensive when you actually consider its poor nutritional value. And you have to compare—. It gives instant gratification, but it doesn’t nourish people. So, I think there is a lot of complexity to this problem, which I think was very much recognised by Peter Fox. This isn't just the appalling cut in benefits and the deliberate policies of the UK Government to keep benefits at a much lower rate than the increase in the cost of living, but I think it really is about changing our relationship with food.

I have a constituent who works tirelessly with young people, and has done for about 30 years, on getting them to do sports. He's one of a family of 12, and he said, 'Well, we were always poor, but we were happy at Christmas so long as we had some apples and some tangerines.' And in those days, tangerines were a rarity, not a year-round thing; they were a treat. One of the problems here is that we live in a society where there's so much plenty all over the place, and it's described to us on our television screens every single night and everybody can see it. Everybody watches television, even if they can't afford to turn the cooker on. That is part of the problem.

One third of all our food in this country is wasted. We cannot say that we live in the same sort of food desert as they live in in Eritrea or other places that are affected by climate change; this problem is much more complicated than that. That doesn't mean to say that the benefits aren't set deliberately too low, and that people are in these short-term contracts, zero-hours contracts that make it really, really difficult for people to budget, and they inevitably get into debt. That is one of the reasons why they have to resort to foodbanks, because they genuinely have had to use whatever wages they've had that week in order to pay back the debts that they've acquired when they weren't in work. That's one of the problems with universal credit: it goes up and down like a yo-yo, and there's so little certainty to it.

I just want to home in a little bit on the amendment by the Conservatives, because you've asked to delete the second paragraph of the motion, which talks about the rise and rise of foodbanks. I just wonder why you're not prepared to accept that there has been this rise and rise of foodbanks, because we can all produce huge amounts of evidence to say that there has been. I also think it goes back to something that I challenged Gareth about yesterday, which is about does the UK Government do child rights impact assessments. I'm sure they don't, simply because you only have to look at the way in which they've reduced absolutely the value of child benefit, which is the final thing that all mothers can rely on, even when everything else has gone out the window, when their relationships have broken down and they've had to flee a violent household. In April 2010, it was £20.30 for the first child and £13.40 for any subsequent child; now, it's £21.15 for the first child and £14 for subsequent children. So, that's an 85p increase in 11 years for the first child, and 60p for any subsequent children. And anybody who goes shopping will know that food prices have gone up hugely—hugely—just in the last few months as a result of us leaving the European Union, mainly, and yet—. That is one of the main sources of poverty.