It’s been seven long weeks since the Prime Minister resigned, saddling Britain with a zombie government. Apart from a last-minute trip to Kyiv, Boris Johnson has largely been serving his notice in the Med, while the Tory leadership contenders fish lazily in the shallow waters of their voting pool.
Liz Truss, now almost certainly our next prime minister, has given us more detail about hitting the nuclear button than her plans to stop Britain freezing and starving.
An absentee government presiding over a summer of no content.
Meanwhile, every day more than two million children are waking up facing hunger. According to the Food Foundation, 7.3 million adults and 2.6m children are living in households which are cutting back on meals or skipping them altogether. That’s almost 10m people in total.
There are now twice the number of foodbanks as branches of McDonald’s. Fareshare alone is delivering a staggering four meals per second.
That’s before tomorrow’s energy price cap rise which could push two million more families into fuel poverty, according to National Energy Action.
Yet this summer, the Government has even abandoned its Marcus Rashford-inspired voucher scheme.
So this July and August we owe an unimaginable debt to the unseen, unthanked and often invisible army of people feeding Britain.
People like Jackie Warren, 58, and Belinda Lipscomb who work at Growing Places in Waterlooville, Hampshire.
“I never thought I’d see three-year-olds struggling with stress,” Jackie says.
“Children are asking us, ‘Why is my mummy unhappy? Why is she crying?’ The mental health impact is immense – money worries affect the whole family.
“I’ve been working in childcare for 42 years, since I was 16, and I’ve never seen families so in need. People can’t manage.”
Growing Places uses food from Fareshare – which redistributes food that would otherwise have gone to waste – to provide hot meals during the holidays. Their Cook and Eat sessions also include advice about how to bulk out food and other tips.
“We’ll show someone how to lower a hem so a dress lasts longer,” Jackie says.
This picture is being repeated all over the country. At New Heights, a community centre in Kingstanding, Birmingham, we find mum-of-three Angela Mayer, 47, with two of her three children, one who has severe autism and ADHD, worrying about the future. She had to give up work as a nurse to care for her older son, who has Down’s syndrome.
“My son is doubly incontinent, so I have to put the washing machine on a lot,” she says.
“Food prices are all going up. I don’t buy clothes or go out. I don’t smoke or drink. I already go without to make sure my kids are fed and have a roof over their heads. There’s nothing else to cut back on.”
During term time, New Heights serves up around 500 rounds of toast a day to give children breakfast.
It has been running a school holiday community cafe which hosts cooking workshops that come with a £10 Aldi voucher for ingredients.
Full-time nurse Aggie Williams, 45, is here with two of her four children, seven-year-old twins, Jerome and Xavier. “It doesn’t matter if you work full-time, it’s hard,” she explains. “If you work more, you pay more.
“I’ve got a three-year-old and last month, nursery cost £884.”
Today Unison released figures showing one-third of low-paid public sector workers are skipping meals.
“We don’t have treats anymore,” Aggie says. “I don’t go shopping with the children so that way they can’t ask me for anything.”
A 48-year-old mum with two teenagers asked not to be named. “I work in a fish shop,” she says. “But you can work 40/50 hours a week and not have enough to pay for everything at the moment. When I’ve paid my bills, I have £94 left for the month.”
Cafe manager at New Heights, Joanne Fields, 58, says people are only just coping because of the good weather. “They don’t need to put the heating on at the moment, they’re eating cold or uncooked meals, but what will happen in winter?” she asks.
Maisie Allen, 21, is the service delivery assistant. “The vouchers are not an added extra,” she says. “People really, really need them.”
Trustee John McGorman, 72, says the charity stepped in after local teachers told them they were feeding hungry pupils out of their own pockets. “It takes me back to my own childhood,” he says. “I thought we’d moved on from this.”
In North London, a traditional parent-teacher association has had to turn itself into a group fundraising for food. Sarah Sudea, 44, is a teacher and chairwoman of Friends of Stroud Green Primary School.
“We’ve previously done food boxes but there’s no point giving people pasta if they can’t cook it,” she says. “This year we realised we needed to give people vouchers. We can’t educate children who don’t have full bellies.”
Government negligence means that without community volunteers and the support of charities and organisations, hundreds of thousands of children would have gone hungry this summer.
Now, as we face the bleakest of winters with the thinnest prospect of Government help, these are the community volunteers Britain will need more than ever.
How to help
To donate to FareShare fareshareuk.com/NoChildGoesHungry. Monthly gifts are being matched by long-standing FareShare supporters Mike and Helen Brown of Oxfordshire, up to a combined value of £100,000. New-heights.org.uk, stroudgreenprimary.com/Friends-of-Stroud-Green
