From the Revd Paul
Nicolson
Sir, - The Archbishop of
Canterbury's comments about food banks (
News, 8 February) need some qualification.
Here in Haringey, three
wards had high rates of low birth-weight between 2007 and 2009:
Tottenham Green 12.5 per cent of live births; St Ann's 9.4 per
cent; Haringey 11.62 per cent. The average for the borough of
Haringey is 7.63 per cent, and England 7.53 per cent, and the OECD
in 2008 6.4 per cent, with Iceland lowest at 3.8 per cent and
Turkey highest at 11 per cent.
Professor Michael Crawford,
of the Institute of Brain Chemistry and Human Nutrition, has shown
that low birth-weight associated with poor maternal nutrition and
foetal growth-restriction is the strongest predictor of poor
learning ability, school performance, behavioural disorders, and
crime.
National policies about the
level of benefits and how they are capped and cut have ignored for
decades the escalating prices of the minimum quantities of food,
fuel, clothes, transport, and other necessities needed for healthy
living. Haringey Council has shown that the single adult
unemployment benefit of £71 a week will be hit by any, some or all,
of a minimum of £3.18 council tax, £5.89 rent unpaid owing to the
housing-benefit cap, and £38.15 rent unpaid, owing to the overall
benefit cap £38.15, and a maximum of £7.43, £51.89, and £193.54
respectively from April this year.
Women need a healthy diet
before they conceive and while they are pregnant to give birth to
healthy babies. They are running out of money to feed themselves
and their children, and going to food banks that provide food for
only three days, three times with intervals, is not enough for a
healthy diet before or during a nine-month pregnancy.
PAUL NICOLSON
Taxpayers Against Poverty
93 Campbell Road
London N17 0BF