Most people went into Work and Pensions Questions expecting Iain Duncan Smith to be in a tetchy fame of mind following this morning’s report on food banks. As a matter of fact, the Work and Pensions Secretary was very, very keen to tell us as often as he possibly could how ‘seriously’ he was taking that report. And the Opposition, which claims to care a lot more about these matters, completely failed to make productive use of its time grilling him.
Some Tory ministers were worried that an impending Labour reshuffle at some point this term might see Rachel Reeves moved on to their patch, as she’s deemed very good in the Chamber. After today’s performance I’m not quite sure what they had to be worried about as the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary managed to ask a series of rather pointless questions which involved shoehorning the Labour tribal line about food banks into the commentary.
She welcomed his comments and asked if he recognised the picture painted by the Archbishop of Canterbury about hunger stalking Britain.
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