DOUBLING OF MALNUTRITION IN BRADFORD

That this House views with the utmost concern the doubling of the diagnoses of primary or secondary malnutrition in Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in the years 2010 to 2013 compared to the years 2008 to 2010; believes that this is as a direct result of the poverty and lack of employment in the city caused by the Government’s unrelenting austerity programme; notes the increase of food banks on Bradford and other major cities; further notes the repeated attacks on benefits and the stigmatisation of those claiming them; and calls on the Government to ensure that this shameful statistic of poverty is eradicated through the immediate halting of benefit cuts, the pegging of energy prices, the introduction of the living wage nationally and investment in an emergency job creation programme to bring work to a city with some of the highest rates of unemployment in the UK.