When Labour came into power in 2024, Keir Starmer pledged to ‘end the mass dependence’ on food banks and food parcels, saying it was ‘unacceptable’ that people had no choice but to use food banks
Film director Ken Loach says that despite it being a decade since his hard-hitting movie I, Daniel Blake was released, food banks were now ‘an institution’ in society.
In the 2016 film, Dave Johns stars as poverty-stricken Daniel Blake, who is denied benefits despite being declared unfit for work by his doctor. In the end he dies in poverty after suffering a heart attack just before a benefits appeal hearing. The movie won the Palme d’Or as well as a 2017 BAFTA for Outstanding British Film.
In one famous scene from the movie, single mum Katie – played by Hayley Squires – is so hungry she pours cold beaked beans into her hand and eats them after going to a food bank.
At the time of release, Iain Duncan Smith – then Tory minister for Secretary of State for Work and Pensions – said the film was ‘unfair’ to Jobcentre staff, who were portrayed as ‘uncaring’. Greg Clark, the then Tory business secretary, also said the film was ‘a work of fiction’.
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The first food bank in the UK opened in 2000, with 35 operating nationwide by 2010. It was in 2010 that David Cameron formed a coalition government with the Lib Dems – ousting Labour from power – and by 2014 there were 2,800 food banks across the UK.
When Labour came into power in 2024, Keir Starmer pledged to ‘end the mass dependence’ on food banks and food parcels, saying it was ‘unacceptable’ that people had no choice but to use food banks.
Labour say its ‘New Deal’ for working people aimed to boost wages and strengthen ‘crisis support’ teams – with the aim to make food banks unnecessary by 2030.
Speaking this week, Mr Loach, 89, said that just a year or two before the film was made it would have been ‘unthinkable’ that people could ‘starve’ if they didn’t get help from food banks. He said, however, that food banks were now ‘an institution’ in society.
The iconic film director said: “The food bank scene in which Katie pours baked beans into her hadn’t from a tin and eats them cold came from a real story. At the time, we tried to make a film about whether food banks are tolerable. Now they’re an institution in society.
“It’s extraordinary that we accept then people will starve unless they get food from a charity. That was simply unimaginable a year or two before we made the film.”
He added: “If you were vulnerable or needed support, you were met with punishment, and there was a constant vilifying of people who needed help. The film is very much a film about the cruelty of the system that says ‘Poverty is the fault of the poor, you’re not striving enough, you’re not doing enough job interviews’.”