Desperate parents are stealing baby formula to keep their children fed
Like most first-time dads, this father wants to do the best for his baby son, even if that means stealing baby formula to keep him fed.
“It’s the hungry scream, I know it now,” he said, looking out to sea from the clifftop.
Most days, this man and his partner take him for walks along the beach in his buggy. The sea air is fresh. It sounds idyllic, but the truth is they can barely afford to feed him.
Both parents asked that their names not be published.
“I was trying to make the milk last, so I wasn’t putting as much powder in as it said to,” the man said. The responsibility of feeding a baby weighs heavily.
“In my head, I was thinking ‘F*** that – I am just going to go and steal him some’.”
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‘There’s no way you’d let them starve’
Over the next few weeks, he worked out how to avoid the security measures in their local shops to minimise the chance of being caught – but the adrenaline is always there when he goes in to steal.
His favoured technique is the top-up: buying £20 worth of groceries and stealing a few things that he simply doesn’t put through the till.
Sometimes it works, but not always. He was once challenged by two store employees who had spotted him stealing. They asked: “What’s in the bag?”
His response was simple and to the point: “Just some stuff I have stolen, if I had the money I’d pay for it.”
Only once have the police been called and he was taken off to the police station for questioning before being released.
But he keeps doing it to feed his son.
The most expensive – and essential – item on the list
“It’s just when we’re really desperate, we manage our money normally,” says the boy’s mum who is in her early 30s.
She’s embarrassed by what they’ve been doing – it leaves her stressed and tired.
She is on statutory maternity leave from her job as a retail assistant, but inflation means they run out of money almost every month. She said she hasn’t been able to access Health Start vouchers from the government that are supposed to provide some help.
Baby formula is one of the most expensive, and essential, items on their shopping list.
She tried hard to breastfeed, but her son wouldn’t latch on, so formula milk is their only way of feeding him.
“I just tell my partner what I need, when we need it and he’ll go and do it. There’s always a risk of him being arrested and not coming back,” she said, struggling to finish the sentence.
“And then… we’re stuck.”
Her partner is unapologetic. He’ll do what it takes to feed his son: “The price of the milk is criminal. Where’s the line? If you’re talking about getting food for your baby, surely that’s not on the wrong side of the line?”
They are just one of countless families across the country who are suffering due to above-inflation rises in the cost of baby formula milk. New data from First Steps Nutrition shows that the cost of the cheapest brand of formula milk has risen by 45% in the past two years.
Other brands have risen between 17% and 31% in that time period.
Read more:
Soaring cost of baby formula is leading to unsafe feeding practices
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Watering down formula
Health professionals consistently point out that all first formula milks must meet the same industry standards, so the cheapest and the most expensive brands all provide a baby with the nutrition they need.
Sky News has also spoken to other desperate parents risking their babies’ health by feeding them formula that is either watered down or mixed with cow’s milk or sugar-laden condensed milk.
“People shouldn’t be facing these choices when they are simply trying to feed their baby safely … This shouldn’t be happening in 21st-century Britain,” says Clare Murphy, the chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advice Service.
“This is a scandal.”
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‘On the brink of a public health crisis’
She added: “It is appalling that we’re having this conversation that you are going out and finding these kind of stories.
“All these things that are happening are putting us on the brink of a public health crisis.”
Inside Hartlepool’s Baby Bank, they feel that crisis biting every day. It is another frantic day of parents coming in looking for essentials for their babies, and their team of volunteers buzz about fetching items. A sparrow has just flown in from outside and there’s a commotion while they try to guide it out. It’s a rare moment of distraction.
The number of families coming in keeps rising – so too does the variety of nationalities amongst them. They have one volunteer from El Salvador who helps translate for Spanish speakers. The next mum through the door only speaks Arabic. Her 10-year-old son is helping convey what his mother needs to the volunteers.
Just two tins left
The baby bank founder Emilie De Bruijn has just two final tins of first formula available to give out. They are like “gold dust” she said, sounding drained. “This is the busiest week we’ve ever had.”
Her team of volunteers now support around 170 families a week, with baby formula their second most-requested item behind nappies.
Charities across the UK have told Sky News they are dealing with a similar surge in demand – from Aberdeen to Cornwall.
The Splice Baby Bank in Bridgend told Sky News that they often have families needing two tubs of formula a week and regularly make deliveries to families. At the Tippytoes Baby Bank in Leyland, Lancashire, they are exasperated because it all feels so precarious – they are in no doubt that the health and development of babies are being put at risk.
Back in Hartlepool, Emilie explained that when they can’t provide the formula a family needs, parents often become frustrated and resort to desperate measures to feed their little ones.
“People are doing unsafe things,” Emilie says. “They are swapping to [different types] of formula and that’s not good for digestion. They have said: ‘I’d rather baby had a rash than be starving’. It’s that stigma, that shame. Will you be trolled? Will people try and take your child away?”
A black market
The problem with having an in-demand, unaffordable product is that people will look for alternative ways of finding it. A black market in baby formula has sprung up.
The father who was stealing milk also admits to buying discount tubs via a contact, he called a “fence” – a woman selling stolen baby formula for knockdown prices.
“She sells it for a third of the price … She’ll be on the bus with the bags and I’ll meet her later,” he explains. “It’s branded stuff. I won’t go to a back alley and buy baby formula from someone who has made it themselves.”
Over the past few months, Sky News has seen multiple messages posted online from parents desperately seeking baby formula.
One mum told Sky News she was even considering selling sexual images of herself to meet the cost of it.
Others look for cheap or free formula milk which is regularly advertised online by people selling or giving it away. Health professionals call it “formula foraging”. Often it’s just parents with good intentions who don’t want to throw unopened containers that are still within their use-by date in the bin.
It is the tubs that are already open and being traded online that really concern Emilie.
“It could be out of date, it could be laden with bacteria.
“This could be a baby ends up in A&E, on a drip, because they could get such a bad stomach bug. They could get so dehydrated. It’s horrendous.
“Families shouldn’t be having to put themselves into dangerous situations like buying a half tub. How do you know that hasn’t been laced with something?”
She would like to see a clampdown: “It’s dangerous, but people are desperate. That child could be eating something that’s riddled with bacteria. I don’t want to see babies ended up in hospital with stomach bugs, but it seems inevitable.”
More needing hospital treatment
Infant feeding specialist Dr Vicky Thomas told Sky News that anecdotal evidence suggests there are more infants being brought for treatment at A&E but that the reasons are often complex, and families are unlikely to say that they are struggling to feed their children.
“In the worst-case scenarios, families sometimes worry that something like that will result in their children being removed from them which is absolutely not what we would expect to happen.
“I think we are going to see babies who are being underfed or possibly overfed because they are having milk crammed into them when they are not actually wanting or needing it just because of the expense of making a bottle.”
She pointed out just how crucial the first year is for a baby’s development. “They will double their birth weight by the time they are six months, they treble it by the time they are about a year old… you double the size of your brain,” she explained.
“So it’s not just about building a healthy body, it’s about building a healthy brain.”
Dr Thomas agrees that what’s happening does amount to a public health crisis. “I think that is completely accurate,” she said.
“The nutrition that babies are receiving right now determines their health going forward for the next 80 years.”
A daily battle for survival
The need for better solutions for families is clear. Clare Murphy from BPAS explained that there are short-term measures that could help, but also wants a proper government-led review to establish what is going on.
“This is an issue in need of national attention,” she said.
“It really needs an urgent review to see how we can absolutely secure access to affordable infant formula for every family that needs it.
“We need to look at why we are facing such high prices and really investigate how we ensure access to an affordable, safe product that families across the UK can use.”
The formula milk manufacturers told Sky News that they realise how difficult times are for families but that they are facing a significant rise in production costs.
A spokesperson for Danone, which makes Cow & Gate and Aptamil, told Sky News: “We’ve tried to make savings and absorb costs wherever we can so we can continue to offer the best value to parents right across the UK.
“We are working with key retailers to offer more bigger format value packs, which we have also committed to keep at the same price to retailers throughout 2023.
“Ultimately, individual retailers set the selling price in their stores for all products.”
Open tubs of formula are regularly being traded online
A spokesperson for Nestle, which makes SMA formula milk, told Sky News they are working to increase prices in a responsible way, adding: “Our goal is to keep products affordable and accessible for consumers while still paying fair prices to our suppliers, including farmers.”
A UK government spokesperson said: “We recognise the impact rising prices are having on families which is why we are providing significant support worth on average £3,300 per household, including holding down energy bills, uplifting benefits and delivering direct cash payments.
“In April 2021, the value of Healthy Start rose from £3.10 to £4.25 per week, providing additional support to eligible pregnant women and families with children aged under four and over one to make healthy food choices.
“Those eligible families with children aged under one can receive £8.50 in total, a rise from £6.20 a week.”
There is no plan to increase the value of the Healthy Start vouchers.
None of that helps the hungry boy whose parents are stealing to keep him fed. It’s a daily battle that they are in – it’s a survival thing for them. Their options are limited.
His mum said we were the first people she has told about stealing the milk. She hates herself for doing it but won’t wait for that hungry scream again.
“He’s precious. I’d do anything for him. Even though it’s breaking the law.”
The flying of St George’s flags across the country are creating “no-go” zones for NHS staff, with some facing frequent abuse, health bosses have warned.
Several NHS trust chief executives and leaders have said staff feel intimidated by the national symbols, including when they make home visits.
The findings follow a survey conducted among senior managers, 45% of whom were extremely concerned about discrimination towards staff.
A leader of a trust said anonymously that there were safety issues around how they work in the community, with nurses regularly visiting patients in their homes alone.
He said: “You’re going in on your own, you’re locking the door behind you.
“I have been into homes with people who have been convicted of sex offences, and we go in and provide care to them.
“It can be a really precarious situation, and they [the nurses] handle that absolutely brilliantly.
“The autonomy and the clinical decisions that they make within that, I think, is fantastic.
“We saw during the time when the flags went up – our staff, who are a large minority of black and Asian staff, feeling deliberately intimidated.
“It felt like the flags were up creating no-go zones. That’s what it felt like to them.
“You add that on top of real autonomous working, that real bravery of working in people’s homes, with an environment… [where] it feels like it’s an area that’s designed to exclude them.
“Our staff continue to work in that environment, and I think they deserve our real praise and thanks as a nation, frankly, for doing that within those really difficult circumstances.”
He added his trust had also seen “individual instances of aggression towards staff”.
File pic: iStock
Another NHS trust leader said a member of staff, who is white and has children of mixed heritage, had asked some people putting up flags to move so she could park her car.
“The individuals filmed what was happening, and then followed her, and she continued to receive abuse over a series of several days, not because she objected to the flags, but because she disturbed them,” they said.
“There are lots of stories like that. There are lots of stories where people have tried to take flags down outside of their own homes and have been abused and threatened as a consequence of that.”
The leader said the “springing up of flags everywhere has created another form of intimidation and concern for many, many of our staff”.
Daniel Elkes, chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents trusts, said: “The NHS has relied on overseas recruitment for a long time to ensure we have the right workforce.
“We have a really diverse workforce and without that you can’t deliver the NHS.
“We are trying to recruit from the very places where we provide healthcare so the intake into the NHS is representative of British people from more diverse backgrounds.”
Professor Nicola Ranger, the Royal College of Nursing’s general secretary, said: “Following a summer of further racist disorder, it is little wonder a growing number of nursing staff report feeling unsafe, particularly when having to work on their own and often at night.
“The government and all politicians have to stop pandering to dangerous anti-migrant sentiments and employers must prioritise tackling racism and work with trade unions to develop stronger mechanisms to protect staff.”
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A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said there was “no place for intimidation, racism or abuse in our country or our NHS”, adding that threats and aggression should be reported to police.
They said the government valued the “diversity of our NHS”, and that workers “must be treated with dignity and respect”.
“Our flags represent our history, our heritage, and our values,” they said. “They are a symbol of our nation and belong to all of us – not just some of us.”
The survey findings come ahead of strike action by resident doctors over pay and jobs due to take place on Friday for five days.
A woman caught with £5bn in Bitcoin in the UK’s highest ever value money laundering investigation has been jailed for 11 years and eight months – after nearly five years on the run.
Zhimin Qian, 47, sat up in bed looking stunned when police kicked open the bedroom door of an Airbnb in a York suburb on 22 April last year.
She vanished and went on the run after officers seized more than 61,000 Bitcoin in the country’s biggest cryptocurrency seizure in a raid of her rented £5m home next to Hampstead Heath.
Qian – who fled China after carrying out a huge fraud and arrived in the UK in 2017 on a false St Kitts and Nevis passport in the name of Yadi Zhang – pleaded guilty to two money laundering offences at Southwark Crown Court.
Police said she styled herself the “Goddess of Wealth” and wore imperial robes as her sales teams offered 300% returns at conferences in luxury hotels in China promoting her “Britain Nice Life Insurance” scheme.
In a slick video played to targets, the narrator says “Britain is a nation of glories and dreams” over footage of the Houses of Parliament, Oxford University, Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace and the City of London.
Qian was already wanted in China over two other scams when she orchestrated the gigantic investment fraud, conning more than 128,000 victims from every province out of 40bn Yuan (around £4.6bn) between 2014 and 2017.
More than 80 people have been convicted in China over the scam, but Qian converted some of the proceeds into more than 70,000 Bitcoin and fled, crossing the border into Myanmar on a moped before arriving at Heathrow Airport in September 2017.
Jian Wen. Pic: CPS
The women rented a £17,000-a-month house in Hampstead. Pic: CPS
She recruited Jian Wen, who left her job in a south London Chinese takeaway, and the women moved into a £17,000-a-month rented £5m house next to Hampstead Heath, posing as the bosses on an international jewellery business.
They travelled extensively across Europe, buying jewellery and spending tens of thousands of pounds on designer clothes and shoes in Harrods, while Wen bought a £25,000 E-Class Mercedes and sent her son to the £6,000-a-term Heathside preparatory school.
Qian made extensive notes about her “grandiose” plans to increase her social standing.
She wanted to meet a royal duke, hoped the Dalai Lama would anoint her as a reincarnated Goddess, and dreamed of ruling Liberland – an unrecognised micronation on the Croation side of the Danube – as Queen.
The women travelled extensively. Pic: Met Police
Wen tried to buy Hampstead property. Pic: Met Police
But the women came to the attention of police when they tried to buy a £24m seven-bedroom Hampstead mansion with a swimming pool, using more than £800,000 converted from Bitcoin.
Officers raided their home in October 2018 and seized £300,000 in cash and cheques, along with phones and laptops, and found a hand drawn “treasure map” leading from Harrods to a safety deposit box containing more devices.
When investigators finally accessed the cryptocurrency wallets stored on them, they thought someone had put the decimal point in the wrong place.
The 61,279 Bitcoin was then worth £1.4bn and has now soared to more than £5bn, making it the biggest ever cryptocurrency seizure in Britain and, until recently, the world.
Read more: How Chinese takeaway worker led police to biggest ever Bitcoin seizure
Police believed Qian had left the country, but shortly before Wen was found guilty of money laundering offences in March last year, Detective Constable Joe Ryan detected activity on a cryptocurrency exchange from a wallet linked to Qian, which hadn’t been used since 2019.
The exchange provided details of the account holder – Seng Hok Ling, a Malaysian national with a previous conviction for fraud in Hong Kong in 2015, who was living in Matlock, Derbyshire.
Seng Hok Ling arrives at a rented property. Pic: Met Police
Qian disguises her appearance while on the run. Pic: Met Police
Working on the theory he may be in contact with Qian, detectives stepped up the manhunt, which took them all over the UK, before they identified her at a detached house in a York suburb.
When police kicked open the upstairs bedroom door, there was Qian, lying under a bright red duvet and struggling to put on her top as she stared wide eyed at officers from behind her thick glasses.
Detective Constable Chris Woods told colleagues: “It’s her.”
A ledger and passwords found sewn inside a purpose-made concealed pocket in the jogging bottoms she was wearing, led investigators to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency worth around £67m.
Ling had helped her stay on the run, providing false documents and money laundering services, and renting Airbnb properties, including a house in Glasgow and a remote farmhouse near Loch Tay in the Scottish Highlands.
The court heard he tried to get one passport in the name of dead Hong Kong actress Dianxia Shen.
Staff made to sign confidentiality agreements. Pic: Met Police
A rotating entourage of cooks, drivers and security guards were employed on lucrative contracts to look after Qian, who they assumed was a rich recluse.
They were made to sign strict confidentiality agreements, which barred them from using Chinese devices or apps and photographing, recording or videoing “anyone or anything indoors or outdoors” – with breaches resulting in dismissal and fines of up to $30,000.
Metropolitan Police officers travelled to Beijing and Tianjin to speak to victims of the fraud, some of whom had lost their life savings, seen their family collapse or been left unable to pay for medical care.
Chinese police officers were lined up to become the first in history to give evidence in a UK court, but Qian pleaded guilty on the first day of the trial, while Ling also admitted a money laundering charge.
The court heard that since being in prison Qian has had poetry published and her artwork displayed at an exhibition.
Wen was jailed for six years and eight months last year, and the sentencing of Qian and Ling marks the end of what the Met’s head of economic and cyber crime called “one of the longest running and most complex economic crime investigations” in the force’s history.
“She lived, while she was on the run in the UK, a relatively reclusive lifestyle. She had that entourage of people around her, but she didn’t venture out much,” he said of Qian.
“And we have some understanding from some of her musings and some of thoughts around what she may do with the rest of her money and her wealth and her life ultimately.
“But thankfully, we were able to catch her and bring her to justice before some of those dreams were realised.”
The fortune is now at the centre of a High Court battle between the UK government and thousands of Chinese victims.
Prosecutors have set up a compensation scheme but lawyers representing those who want to recover their investments say it should reflect the huge rise in the value of Bitcoin and not just what they put in.
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