Jack Monroe comprehensively debunked a Tory MP’s claim that people use food banks because they can’t cook or budget
In ‘Tories are Out of Touch’, Episode 872, the MP for Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, Lee Anderson, told the House of Commons that food bank use is driven by people’s inability to cook from scratch and to budget effectively.
"There's not this massive use for food banks in this country. We've got generation after generation who cannot cook properly… they cannot budget"
Conservative Lee Anderson invites MPs to "come to a real food bank" in his constituency of Ashfieldhttps://t.co/kPrVhc52I9 pic.twitter.com/JEnWIJcMhW
— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) May 11, 2022
Anderson, who was a Labour councillor for the same area until 2018, has been the subject of controversy on several occasions, including boycotting England’s football matches because he disapproved of them taking the knee and when he was caught faking a doorstep encounter during an election campaign.
Tweeters had plenty of comebacks.
1.
Amazing how everyone suddenly became shit at cooking and budgeting right when the Tories came to power https://t.co/zpFfQgduAJ
— James Felton (@JimMFelton) May 11, 2022
2.
What’s Lee Anderson cooking tonight? pic.twitter.com/UPfEWKUQ8R
— Angela Rayner 🌹 (@AngelaRayner) May 11, 2022
3.
A Tory MP just stood up and told Parliament we only have food banks because people "can't cook properly" and "can't budget".
The only people who can't budget are Tory Ministers, who are helping energy shareholders get rich instead of helping everyone else with a windfall tax.
— Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP (@BellRibeiroAddy) May 11, 2022
4.
He was in the Labour Party until 2018! Quite a few of the 2019 Tory intake bring the most pig ignorant radio phone-in arguments to the actual House of Commons. Another irrefutable Brexit benefit. https://t.co/fBqX8LJeg8
— James Oh Brien (@mrjamesob) May 11, 2022
5.
man who claims £208k *in expenses* in one calendar year delivers lecture on the unnecessariness of food banks https://t.co/cEvWnoH5as pic.twitter.com/gGugBq2q1W
— Owen Williams 🏴🇺🇦 (@OwsWills) May 11, 2022
6.
Is there some kind of Tory WhatsApp group where they compete to be twat of the day. It's the only logical explanation for how this keeps happening. https://t.co/jVNUOkIP30
— Ian Dunt (@IanDunt) May 11, 2022
7.
Presumably the heavily subsidised restaurant at the HoC is because MPs are also shit at cooking and budgeting https://t.co/KekQOT8gOh
— badly-drawn bee 🐝 (@soapachu) May 11, 2022
8.
This absolute charmer, who previously said nuisance tenants should be forced to live in tents and pick potatoes all day, has outdone himself here https://t.co/zJ7zTzSAQB
— Liam Thorp (@LiamThorpECHO) May 11, 2022
9.
BREAKING: Tory MP Lee Anderson has explained that people are depending on food banks because they "can't cook properly". It is definitely nothing to do with Tory policies that have left 2 million people without enough food to cook every day x
— Laura Kuenssberg Translator (@BBCLauraKT) May 11, 2022
Jack Monroe, whose advice and cookery books based on their own experience of extreme poverty are an invaluable guide to making the best of scant rations, set the record absolutely straight.
You can’t cook meals from scratch with nothing.
You can’t buy cheap food with nothing.
The issue is not ‘skills’, it’s 12 years of Conservative cuts to social support.
The square root of fuck all is ALWAYS going to be fuck all, no matter how creatively you’re told to dice it.— Jack Monroe (@BootstrapCook) May 11, 2022
You can’t ‘budget better’ when rents are fixed, private rents are extortionate, poverty wages are rife, benefits aren’t rising in line with inflation, energy bills are through the roof, UC payments are deliberately delayed forcing people to take on debts to the DWP, etc etc etc.
— Jack Monroe (@BootstrapCook) May 11, 2022
For a party so keen to push personal fiscal responsibility back onto the most vulnerable individuals, the Conservatives are remarkably reticent to take any degree of responsibility for deliberately pushing those people into such difficult desperate situations in the first place.
— Jack Monroe (@BootstrapCook) May 11, 2022
It’s not the first time they’ve had to explain poverty to the privileged and, sadly, it’s unlikely to be the last.
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