The number of people using food banks to make end meet has skyrocketed this year, according to new figures released today by the Trussell Trust.
The number of people using food banks to make end meet has skyrocketed this year, according to new figures released today by the Trussell Trust.
346,992 people received a minimum of three days emergency food from Trussell Trust food banks in 2012-13, compared to 128,697 in 2011-12 and 40,898 when Labour left office in 2010. Of those helped in 2012-13, 126,889 (36.6 per cent) were children.
Labour’s shadow environment secretary Mary Creagh called the figures “shocking”.
“The UK is the seventh richest country in the world yet under David Cameron’s leadership, we are facing a cost of living crisis and growing epidemic of hidden hunger, with some people increasingly unable to meet their family’s basic needs…This incompetent Tory-led Government needs to wake up to the human cost of their failed economic policies and change course now.”
The graph below charts the rise of food bank use and its explosion under the coalition.
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20 Responses to “Coalition presides over shocking increase in number of people using food banks”
Simon Cope
Were there the same number of foodbanks with the same quantity of food available across this period? There could have been the same level of requirement for emergency food in 2005/06 without there being a supply to meet that demand.
Of course, it is appalling that c.350,000 people need emergency food – but this does not tell us whether or not this was also the case under the previous government.
lynn
Exactly – beneath the outrage is more of the same.
Paul Lawrence Hayes
There’s a partial answer to your question in this article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/apr/24/number-people-food-banks-triples (via http://www.trusselltrust.org/ ). Looks like “chart junk” beat information in the battle for “column space” here. 😉
Simon Cope
Thanks Paul – clearly it was always going to be a more complex picture than that suggested by the graph. Interesting to note that according to the article the use of food banks has at least in part been a direct consequence of the removal of other means of support – so it may be that the demand has always been there, but that previously it was met by the state rather than through charity.
LoobyLoo
Unfortunately what is going to happen now, just as it does in every other sector of society where people pull together to help, is that the government will say ‘Oh well done you. Please, carry on and save us the expense of doing something about it.’ They will wash their hands, turn their backs and wander back to their expensive second homes to continue to claim their expenses for painting their duck houses as if nothing has happened.