Figures obtained by Left Foot Forward show the coalition has presided over a shocking growth in the number of people using food banks to feed themselves and their families.
The Guardian reports today that government officials have commissioned an investigation into the recent growth in the number of food banks, soup kitchens and school breakfast clubs as austerity hits the living standards of Britain’s poorest.
The research will examine the extent and effectiveness of emergency food aid and will explore what causes ‘at-risk individuals’ to become ‘food aid users’.
As the graph below shows, while the number of people using food banks increased in the years immediately preceding the coalition’s austerity drive, since 2009-10 the number of people being fed by food banks has trebled.
Data shown to Left Foot Forward by the Trussell Trust also shows that in January of this year alone a staggering 35,095 people were fed by the network of over 300 food banks.
If the current trend is repeated throughout the rest of the year, just under half a million people will have used an emergency food bank before the year is out.
What a damning indictment of George Osborne’s failed austerity drive.
9 Responses to “The human face of austerity: Coalition presides over shocking food bank rise”
LB
Total Spending 2009-10 £669bn 2014-15 £737bn (plus 10.2%)
Total tax revenue 2009-10 £479.7bn 2014-15 £656.5bn (plus (plus 36.9%)
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Spending up – no cuts just increases.
Taxation – whopping rises.
So if spending is up, its not the cause of food banks.
For that you have to look to the tax rises.
Newsbot9
Yes, keep on blaming anything but your pork-barrel spending, and spending to cover the expense of slashing cost-saving measures. Keep on claiming your counter-keynsian spending on things like slave labour are “beneficial”, when they actually slow people getting back into work and cost billions, not to mention displacing workers.
Keep on blaming “tax” for everything, food-thief.
Newsbot9
The system doesn’t have the capacity. The results are, sadly, predictable.
LB
1970s – Militant tendency
2010s – The BNP wing of the Labour party turns up.
Newsbot9
Keep on trying to pass your thugs off as lefists. Act like a Neo-Nazi and I’ll call you one…