Edinburgh Food Project CEO Laura van Der Hoeven responds to the launch of The Trussell Trust’s Scottish Parliamentary Election manifesto.
Welcome to 2026 – it’s an election year! As a member of the network we are delighted to welcome Trussell’s manifesto for the Holyrood elections in May, which demands that politicians of all parties commit to consigning the widespread need for foodbanks in Scotland to the past.
It’s been over three years since the Scottish Government published its strategy “Cash First Plan – towards ending the need for foodbanks in Scotland”. Since then, several successful pilot initiatives have taken place that all demonstrate a cash first approach is extremely effective at moving people on from foodbank reliance, but the work has not been mainstreamed, and political momentum has been lost. We need to bring that momentum back! As a sector we are pretty united in our demands for better investment in social security and social housing. We also need a much clearer narrative around how the food system needs to change if we want politicians to take serious action to improve the affordability of healthy food.
In December, food inflation was running at 5.7 per cent, twice the rate of headline inflation. “The rising cost of essentials” is now by far the most common reason why people are referred to our foodbanks. Rising food costs impact everyone and obesity is a public health crisis across the population but the impact on the poorest is always the hardest. School meals, the planning system and public procurement are all important policy levers for a government committed to ensuring that healthy, affordable and culturally appropriate food is available to everyone and no one goes hungry.
The social welfare system and the food system are both failing to address people’s needs. Scarcity is so normalised, it’s leading people experiencing hardship to have such low expectations of public services and such a sense of powerlessness that they become easy prey for parties offering extremist or populist solutions who rarely have the best interests of people living in poverty at heart.
The people we work with often describe the stigma, frustration and confusion of trying to access support and the transformational positive impact on their lives when service providers see them as a whole-person and offer support that sees and meets all of their needs. Often it is culture change as much as policy change that is needed to change lives. The Edinburgh Poverty Commission found that “the single biggest transformation Edinburgh could achieve would be to make the experience of seeking help less painful and confusing more humane, and more compassionate” – charities and public sector service providers alike need to accept the challenge laid down by that finding.
Let’s hope that the 2026 parliament is the one that closes the implementation gap between government policy and the lived experience of people forced to rely on foodbanks for good.
You can read Trussell’s 2026 Scottish Parliament election manifesto here.