Gordon Brown says companies should collaborate with charities to respond to poverty this winter while surplus food is redistributed to help hungry families (The government has lost control of the cost of living crisis – here’s how businesses must step in, 16 November). Food banks are clear: a charitable response to poverty isn’t working. The latest data from the Department for Work and Pensions indicates that 86% of households reporting severe food insecurity didn’t access a food bank. A food parcel cannot stop hunger from happening in the first place. While food banks have scrambled to help as many people as possible, destitution figures have more than doubled in five years.
Food banks in Canada and the US show us that decades of channelling surplus resources to food banks cannot ever fix the problem. The long-term impact on people’s physical and mental health of going hungry, eating too little or having to eat poor-quality surplus food will be devastating.
