“Bedding banks” are about to take their place alongside food banks, baby banks and children’s clothes banks as the new face of charity. Parents unable to afford their heating bills are now turning to blankets, sheets, duvet covers and sleeping bags for their children as their cheapest available protection against the cold winter nights. All because, no matter how prudently they budget, families do not have the cash to feed their prepayment gas and electric meters – it is an 18th-century answer despite there being a 21st-century solution.
In all my time in politics I have never witnessed so much poverty and hardship. In Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, the constituency I grew up in and represented for 32 years and where I am patron of the local family centre, there are more children than ever going to school ill-clad and hungry; desperate mothers falling into the hands of loan sharks; and mental health problems escalating with little NHS provision to cope.
