Michael Gove has said “much, much more” must be done to tackle food waste as it emerged producers are “incentivised” to send their surplus to green energy plants rather than to charities that feed the vulnerable.

Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of food every year is either ploughed back into the ground or sent to animal feed or anaerobic digestion plants because it is cheaper than storing it or transporting it to where it is needed.

The food charity FareShare, which is being supported by The Telegraph’s Christmas Charity Appeal, today appeals to the Government to set up a £15 million fund that would cover storage and transport costs for 100,000 tonnes of food - enough to feed more than one million people every week for a year.

At present, only around 13,000 tonnes of surplus food is being sent to charities such as hospices, homeless shelters and women’s refuges.

Lindsay Boswell, the charity’s chief executive, said the Government has a “morally broken” policy towards food surplus, because anaerobic digestion plants are given financial incentives to turn food into energy, but food producers are given no such incentives to help charities feed people.