Had another letter published in the Bucks Herald this week:
Want to feed children? Local is the best way
I support our local MPs, Greg Smith and Rob Butler, for voting against the proposed food vouchers during the school holidays.
Earlier this year, provision of such vouchers was far from universally
successful, being slow to deliver, expensive to administer, and target
recipients were missed more often than an English soccer penalty. As a more
viable alternative, in many communities local foodbanks instantaneously
materialised, and established foodbanks stepped up a notch. The result was that
more kids were fed more quickly locally than nationally.
In addition, as reported in the Herald last week, food outlets came up with their own schemes to ensure hungry kids were fed.
As a rule, centralised management where local solutions are or could be available is riddled with inefficiencies if not failures: think Covid-testing and PPE-sourcing as two other examples.
Of course, not all communities and food-businesses can easily intervene,
which is where local authorities (not national Government) should step in with
capacity-building and coordination, delivered flexibly, in line with the
nuances of each of its communities.
What the Government should be doing is engineering longer term solutions to tackle the root-causes of kids going hungry, by focusing its energies on re-building the economy after the ravages of Covid. One such policy that would stimulate and level-up the economy is a reduced tax-burden for lower-income families – less money taken in taxes means more money available for food.
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