There’s a familiar ring to Christmas food bank appeals this year, but their context has changed beyond recognition (Hot drinks, free coats, cold, hungry children: the shocking reality of Britain’s winter ‘warm banks’, 13 December). Calling this winter bleak is an understatement for large swathes of the population. Warm banks are now being added to community landscapes as if we’re going through a temporary blip – a carbon copy of how food banks emerged a decade ago.
In the last year, independent food banks have struggled to cope with soaring demand. Most grassroots providers won’t benefit from current nationwide emergency appeals. And King Charles’s donation of fridges and freezers to food banks, however well-intentioned, perpetuates the myth that the redistribution of food surplus will address food poverty.
Millions of emergency food parcels have failed to reduce escalating food insecurity. That should tell us all we need to know. Living incomes are desperately needed. and we can’t let our government off the hook with an ever-increasing range of sticking-plaster responses, sugar-coated by the spirit of Christmas.
Sabine Goodwin
Independent Food Aid Network
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