Guest Sunday People columnist Katie Piper says it's a tragic sign of our times that the number of Brits using food banks has trebled in a year
It's a tragic sign of our times that the number of Brits using food banks has trebled in a year.
A shocking 60,000 were forced to rely on them for their Christmas dinner – and who knows what that figure will be by the end of 2014?
Seeing desperate, hungry people queue for food handouts was something we used to see on TV in developing countries, not here.
But like everyone else I’ve come to the sad realisation food banks are an all-too-common feature on the streets of Britain.
The Trussell Trust, which has 400 of them around the country, says 500,000 people have visited them since April.
And with the jobs market still in such a fragile state, food banks are slap bang on our doorstep, not something to be cringed at in a faraway country.
While I applaud the work done by kind people helping those less fortunate than themselves, it’s a disgrace that in this day and age we should have them at all. We should be seeing less of them next year – not more.
The Government needs to get its act together to make sure we have a proper system for people to fall back on.
It shouldn’t be down to charities to be the sole help for those who fall through the cracks.
We are not just talking about the homeless relying on soup kitchens at this time of year – those stereotypes don’t apply any more.
We are not talking about scroungers or spongers who are getting something for nothing.
It’s our work colleagues who have lost their jobs unexpectedly or families who have to cut back on the food shopping because of the astronomical cost of heating their homes.
Or it’s the people whose benefits have been delayed by some computer glitch.
Basically, ordinary people are having to turn to charity because they cannot afford to feed themselves. And no one is immune.
At a time when the whole country is facing cutbacks, food banks are becoming a reality for many people.
We could be relying on them ourselves.
I was listening to the radio the other day and heard about a nurse who was made redundant when the unit at her hospital was closed down.
It took three months for her compulsory police checks to come through before she could get another job.
So she had to go to a food bank because she was short of money.
If that can happen to a qualified professional, it can happen to anyone.
And that’s a disgrace – pure and simple. It shouldn’t be happening.
The Government should be making sure food bank numbers are cut by the end of 2014, not increasing threefold as they did this year.
Mirror.co.uk
