Ministers are in denial about the impact their policies are having on hunger and poverty in Britain. There are now over 400 Trussell Trust food banks in operation across Britain and countless independent providers besides. Feeding Britain – the report by the all party parliamentary inquiry into hunger in Britain, led by Frank Field MP – should be received as an electric shock to our political leaders. Instead, they are either deluding themselves or attempting to mislead the public by attributing the explosion in food bank use to ‘better publicity’.

There should be no excuse hunger in the 21^st century and it is harder still to explain its prevalence in one of the world’s richest economies. Nothing better symbolises the failure of this government than the fact that there will be more children living in absolute poverty by the end of this parliament than at the beginning. The situation is so bad that the government’s own Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission recently warned that Britain risks becoming a ‘permanently divided nation’. Its chair, Alan Milburn, underlined the enormity of the response needed with his call for politicians to ‘mobilise the whole of society to action behind radical new approaches to meeting the… challenge’.

Labour needs to make sure that the political debate in response to Feeding Britain is about more than its recommendations around food banks. Hunger in Britain asks the government to establish a new national network – ‘Feeding Britain’ – involving government departments, food aid charities, the food industry and others and that they should establish a series of regional pilots to better coordinate provision. There’s nothing wrong with this per se; food banks are providing a vital emergency service to families in need. I recently opened a food bank collection point at Redbridge town hall, which is now expanding across the council following a great response from our staff and members of the public.

But the response to poverty and hunger needs to be bigger. Food banks are a symptom of our divided nation, not the answer to rampant inequality. Hunger in Britain makes a number of sensible recommendations – 76 in total – covering everything from benefits to the education system. One recommendation – that the government establishes a new Office for Living Standards to monitor the impact of policies on household budgets – echoes a recommendation in Alan Milburn’s latest report that the Office for Budget Responsibility should assess the impact of government policy on poverty reduction. The Milburn recommendation needs to be implemented. We need every arm of government focused on poverty reduction.

Only by tackling the structural inequality in our economy and re-establishing ambitious goals to end poverty can we hope to make a lasting difference to the character of our nation and the dignity of its people. Decent jobs, fair pay, an education system that leaves no child behind and a welfare state that acts more as a springboard than a safety net should be at the heart of our programme for government.

Until we address the root causes of poverty and inequality, food banks will remain a depressing necessity. We should all do what we can to support fantastic charities like the Trussell Trust to raise funds and source food, but the job of the next Labour government is to put them out of business: so that every family can put food on their table without charity.

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Wes Streeting is deputy leader and cabinet member for health and wellbeing in the London borough of Redbridge and Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Ilford North

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Photo: Newfrontiers