Politics of Food and Technology Series | Food crisis in the UK and the digitalisation of welfare: Bridging gaps or deepening marginalisation?

This blog is part of a series on ‘the Politics of Food and Technology’, in collaboration with the SOAS Food Studies Centre. All of the blogs in this series are contributions made at the International Humanitarian Studies Association (IHSA) Conference in Istanbul-Bergen, October 2025, to the panel with a similar title. To read the rest of the blogs in this series, please click here. 

In this blog, Iris Lim, Susanne Jaspars, and Yasmin Houamed (SOAS) highlight  a growing food crisis in the UK, alongside a ‘digital-by-default’ welfare transformation. Digitalisation has created the potential to exclude poor and politically marginalised populations because they are unable to pay for digital access, and because of the way the system has been designed. They argue that this exacerbates already existing food insecurity and that digital access is fundamental to addressing it.  

 

Over the last decade, the UK’s deepening food crisis has unfolded alongside a ‘digital-by-default’ transformation of welfare and food support infrastructures.  Over this period, food insecurity has increased to as much as 18% of the UK population (in 2022). Emergency food distribution, almost unknown a decade ago, has soared, with Trussell, one of the UK’s largest food bank networks, distributing 2.9 million emergency food parcels in 2024-25, the equivalent of one parcel every 11 seconds. Policymakers routinely justify digitalisation for reasons of efficiency and accountability, but in this blog, we show how it redistributes responsibility and burden downward onto those already experiencing deprivation and food insecurity and deepens exclusions for those that need welfare the most across England. For a wide range of population groups (for example refugees, migrants, or white working class), design and delivery choices shape who gets help and who falls through the cracks. 

In the UK, the digitalisation of welfare started with Universal Credit in 2012, which combined seven different benefits (unemployment, housing, child benefit, etc) to a single monthly payment. It requires claimants to apply online, and to provide ongoing online entries and communications with work coaches.  Despite concerns raised early on about exclusions due to digital poverty, this was followed by online registration and pre-paid debit cards for the ‘Healthy Start’ government food support programme (for pregnant women and those with young children) in 2022.  Free school meals have also been digitalised, and several government and charitable organisations distribute digital vouchers to be redeemed in supermarkets. Supermarkets and other retailers have also developed a number of apps to supply food to organisations and to individuals. Government digitalisation strategies from 2010 were driven by austerity policies which entailed cutting welfare and public service spending,  Amnesty International, in examining the UK’s welfare system, concluded that it does not comply with obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.  Human rights violations include the barriers imposed by digitalisation because they increase hardship. 

 

Poverty as a digital ‘paywall’ 

Poverty acts as a digital ‘paywall’ to food assistance and wider welfare access. Access to digital devices, data, and skills, all contingent on affordability, has become a prerequisite for gaining welfare support.  Few people living in poverty have smartphones and so rely on basic phones, or, in the case that their phones have been lost or stolen, they rely on shared numbers. For those who did have smartphones, data poverty pervaded their experience.  Those unable to purchase data for internet connectivity must hop between public Wi-Fi hotspots or borrow hotspots from volunteers. Broadband social tariffs are available from some internet providers but are poorly publicised and often unaffordable or unavailable where needed.  According to one assessment, 95% of eligible households miss out.  In some rural and peri-urban areas, connectivity infrastructure is lacking, making access difficult. Exclusion operates through market mechanisms, requiring people to purchase access to claim public support.  

 

Eroding infrastructure and disappearing spaces of care 

The shift to digital has coincided with the systemic erosions of physical spaces where people could previously get face-to-face help. Austerity policies since 2010 have driven library closures, reduced hours of available community support and cut staff across England. Even where physical spaces of support persist, limited opening days, travel costs, and absent staff constrain access. People fill these gaps by paying to print from private internet cafes or taking longer bus journeys seeking help where they can.   

As public spaces with face-to-face support have diminished, food banks and community support organisations have doubled as social infrastructure where people can still receive mediated digital access and build trust and skills, yet these remain volunteer dependent and uneven. 

 

Myth of simple digital literacy 

One persistent issue underpinning digital welfare is the assumption that digital competence and skills is straightforward – that if someone can use a smartphone, they can navigate a digital welfare system. The reality is far more complex. Digital skills vary highly by context and people adept at sending messages and photos to their friends on social media apps may struggle with formal emails, government portals, and forms. These concerns cut across generations and familiarity with technology, affecting older adults and younger people alike. Language and literacy also create key barriers, with both English as an Additional Language (EAL) and native English speakers struggling when they confront text-heavy portals and official language. To fill this gap, only ad hoc chains of help and translation through friends, children, and volunteers mediate a fragile and uneven access.  

 

Design choices  

Interface and service design itself shapes patterns of exclusion. Designers build platforms that work best on desktop computers, but most marginalised people use them on mobile phones with tiny screens and face difficulty uploading required documents. Some systems still require people to download PDFs, print them, fill them out by hand, scan them, and email them back. These complicated user journeys overwhelm even confident users, especially if they have to travel to access a printer or scanner, which introduces new costs to your attempt to access food assistance. Small missteps, such as a missed upload deadlines or dropped connection, often produce detrimental sanctions or benefits losses.  

As Taylor notes in ‘Beyond the Numbers’, when systems demand proof that vulnerable people cannot provide, we risk ‘institutionalising a bias towards the visible’. In the UK, welfare design may be embedding this bias directly into interfaces and processes. Rather than streamlining access for those who need food assistance the most, digitalisation seems optimised for administrative efficiency. This creates obstacles for users who must travel far to scan forms, navigate portals instead of speaking to humans, and be digitally competent to demonstrate their need through online forms. Within the UK Welfare system as a whole, several organisations including Amnesty International have highlighted the ‘punitive regime’ of administration and complexity needs to access benefits that people are eligible for. 

 

The psychological toll  

The digital-first regimes carry heavy psychological costs, such as anxiety around sanctions for simply missing an email, humiliation at intrusive verification, and a sense of being set up to fail. People describe panic when payments stop, tears at job centre interactions, and resignation among older residents too proud or too demoralised to ask for help. The shift to digital has removed the human interactions, that at their best, allowed for discretion and dignity.  

 

Conclusion: The politics of digital-by-default and its effect on food insecurity 

In a context of cuts and rising need, the UK’s digital transformation of welfare and food assistance often deepens rather than bridges marginalisation. By layering device and data requirements and eroding in-person infrastructures, digitalisation reorganises access to food assistance, welfare, and ultimately, food security, through new forms of stratification.  The UK government has developed a welfare system that makes it difficult to navigate for precisely those who need it the most.   

Digitalisation has coincided with increases in food insecurity and has added to the burden on food assistance projects, and often volunteers, which now also provide support with digital access.  The timing is good to bring about change. The Government is committed to reducing dependence on emergency food parcels. And initiatives like The Crisis and Resilience Fund could make digital inclusion a core part of food security policy and not just an afterthought.   

  

More Reading: This blog post uses findings from an ERSC-funded project entitled: Digitalising food assistance: Political economy, governance and food security effects across the Global North-South divide.  See: https://digitalisingfood.org/.   

 

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Iris Lim is a Postdoctoral Researcher and works on the UK case study for the ESRC-funded project that analyses the effect of digitalising food assistance. Her research examines digital public service delivery, digital inclusion, citizenship and integration, and critical user-experience (UX) research.

 

Susanne Jaspars is the Principal Investigator of the same project.  She is a Senior Research Fellow at the SOAS Food Studies Centre.  She is also a Research Associate at CEDEJ Khartoum, and co-editor of Disasters Journal.  Susanne researches the political dynamics of food in situations of conflict, food and humanitarian crisis, and has also analysed migration and asylum policies. Other interests include social approaches to nutrition and accountability for mass starvation.  She has worked mostly in the Horn of Africa, often Sudan, but increasingly also in Europe.

 

Yasmin Houamed is the Research Assistant for the UK case study of the ESRC-funded Digitalising Food Assistance project. She received her MA in Anthropology of Food at SOAS, University of London, and her BA in Political Science from Stanford University. Her research has previously focused on food systems and commodification in Tunisia.

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