Controversial Food Box Contractors Face Scrutiny
There is increased scrutiny for the suppliers of food boxes provided to the chronically ill and those asked to shelter through the Covid pandemic, and a number of high profile individuals have started to question the lack of quantity of goods and nutritional value within the 4,724,611 boxes that have been delivered through the food box scheme.
Today we’re publishing details of each contract that has been published in the scheme to help increase transparency around these contracts and who they were awarded to.
Activist, cook and author Jack Monroe has taken to Twitter to highlight the issue, showing a range of food box photos sent in from here community.
And here’s what one Local Authority thinks passes for £30, five days (!!!!!) of food. Spot the difference. pic.twitter.com/HGhBDfE8L8
— Jack Monroe (@BootstrapCook) January 11, 2021
Early on in the pandemic, Manchester United and England forward Marcus Rashford, championed free schools meals for poorer families struggling through income loss and coronavirus restrictions. He too raises concerns of the quality of support provided by the scheme:
3 days of food for 1 family…
Just not good enough. pic.twitter.com/Y7FJEFFAma— Marcus Rashford MBE (@MarcusRashford) January 11, 2021
The Good Law project revealed in their findings on the UK Government food box scheme, that each food box cost an incredible £44 each, reflecting a £69% mark up on the £26 retail price of similar supermarket boxes. Most concerning of all is the Government, again awarded the contract – worth £208million – without a competitive tender, to foodservice wholesaler, Bidfood and Brakes.
For those interested in the detail of this and other Government contracts awarded for food parcel and related support during Covid, we’ve pulled together a table of all known contracts around food parcels here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTweUvoUgxleSDOddYYcIHEfDy9VzMaQ5OPx5033JparmvgVm2rr-NVHhH35CgAd1IShl7R-XDRz0Gr/pubhtml.
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if you’d like to talk to us about out research or or government procurement data services.
