desperate and destitute

Thousands of people will be forced to take charity food handouts or go hungry this winter, as poverty hits people across the country. The spectre of families forced to subsist on charity hampers is so widespread that the Government is to provide food vouchers for the most desperate. Jobcentre staff are to hand out food vouchers to the neediest cases. The need for the food parcels was described as a throwback to levels of poverty associated with Dickensian times. The acting director of UK Poverty for Oxfam said "There are children with scurvy in Islington; that's a disease that should only exist in 18th-century stories."


The number of people needing food handouts has soared by 50 per cent since 2009, according to the Trussell Trust, a charity that runs a network of more than 70 food banks. Those dependent on emergency food boxes, which contain a three-day ration of essentials including tinned meat, fish and fruit, pasta, tea, milk and sugar, has increased from 25,000 two years ago to 60,000, of whom some 20,000 will be children. The organisation estimates that, on current trends, this would swell to 700 food banks feeding 500,000 people by 2015.

Traditionally, the homeless have been the main beneficiaries of free food parcels. But organisers say they are increasingly helping families and working people. Some parents are so desperate they skip meals or contemplate crime to feed their children.

The director of the Trussell Trust, said: "It is a scandal that hundreds of thousands of Britons every year hit crisis and are forced to go hungry. These are not homeless people on the street. These are people struggling on low incomes.The welfare system is creaking and far less able to cope than it was 10 years ago. There are people who cannot put food on the table for themselves or their families ... they are faced with impossible choices between heating, keeping a roof over their heads and eating."