It is well worth reading Paul Waugh’s interview with Iain Duncan Smith in the House Magazine for a number of reasons – not least his hint about docking child benefit in the future. But the Work and Pensions Secretary also makes an interesting comment about food banks:
‘We are not responsible for food banks, that policy area generally is Cabinet Office and so it should remain. I’m happy for people to visit food banks, I don’t have a particular problem with them.’
I’ve written before about why people visit food banks, and why even if we had a very good benefits system that paid people the right amount of money on time, there would still be a need for these examples of strong communities. But IDS does drop a hint here about a row that raged between departments about who on earth was responsible for food banks.
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