Our founding committee members were joined by Martin Caraher, Professor of Food and Health Policy, who led a discussion on Food Inequalities: Social Rights.

At our inaugural public meeting, we wanted to open a ‘critical’ conversation in London about food inequality in all its forms, such as food poverty, its health impacts and local access. We considered it ‘critical’ in thinking and in timing, given the great level of inequality that exists in London.

We invited practitioners, academics, food workers, union, community & social media activists to link up so that together we can find ways to influence policy and engage with activism to ensure Londoner’s voices are heard by policymakers.

The UK is the world’s fifth largest economy, it contains many areas of immense wealth, its  capital is a leading centre of global finance, its entrepreneurs are innovative and agile, and  despite the current political turmoil, it has a system of government that rightly remains the envy  of much of the world. It thus seems patently unjust and contrary to British values that so many  people are living in poverty. This is obvious to anyone who opens their eyes to see the immense  growth in food banks and the queues waiting outside them, the people sleeping rough in the  streets, the growth of homelessness, the sense of deep despair that leads even the Government to  appoint a Minister for suicide prevention and civil society to report in depth on unheard of levels  of loneliness and isolation.

Professor Philip Alston, United Nations  Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
London, 16 November 2018

14 million people, a fifth of the population, live in poverty. Four million of these are  more than 50% below the poverty line,1 and 1.5 million are destitute, unable to afford basic  essentials.2 The widely respected Institute for Fiscal Studies predicts a 7% rise in child poverty  between 2015 and 2022, and various sources predict child poverty rates of as high as 40%.3 For  almost one in every two children to be poor in twenty-first century Britain is not just a disgrace,  but a social calamity and an economic disaster, all rolled into one.

Professor Philip Alston, United Nations  Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
London, 16 November 2018

The country’s most respected charitable groups, its  leading think tanks, its parliamentary committees, independent authorities like the National  Audit Office, and many others, have all drawn attention to the dramatic decline in the fortunes of  the least well off in this country. But through it all, one actor has stubbornly resisted seeing the  situation for what it is. The Government has remained determinedly in a state of denial. Even  while devolved authorities in Scotland and Northern Ireland are frantically trying to devise ways  to ‘mitigate’, or in other words counteract, at least the worst features of the Government’s  benefits policy, Ministers insisted to me that all is well and running according to plan. Some  tweaks to basic policy have reluctantly been made, but there has been a determined resistance to  change in response to the many problems which so many people at all levels have brought to my  attention. The good news is that many of the problems could readily be solved – Professor Philip Halston.