Cruel Tories broke human rights laws by leaving kids to go hungry through welfare cuts, a top international watchdog claims today.

Delivering a scathing verdict on a decade of austerity, New York-based Human Rights Watch accuses the Government of breaching its duty to ensure the right to adequate food.

Hated welfare cuts are to blame for tens of thousands of poverty-hit families flocking to foodbanks, according to the powerful campaign group.

The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights reveals: “The right to food is recognised in the 1948 Universal Declaration of

Human Rights as part of the right to an adequate standard of living, and is enshrined in the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights”.

(Image: Getty Images)

But Human Rights Watch today confirms what campaigners have claimed for years: Conservative policies have left households, including those with children, without enough food to eat.

Pinning the blame on the Tories for slashing billions from vital benefits, Human Rights Watch’s Western Europe researcher Kartik Raj said: “This rise in hunger has the UK Government’s fingerprints all over it.

“Standing aside and relying on charities to pick up the pieces of its cruel and harmful policies is unacceptable.

“The UK Government needs to take urgent and concerted action to ensure that its poorest residents aren’t forced to go hungry.”

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The Mirror has led the way in exposing surging demand for foodbanks as welfare cuts bite.

We told last month how hungry families ate more than 14 million foodbank meals as the country’s biggest network, the Trussell Trust, handed out 1.6 million aid packages.

The 12-month toll of shame marked a grim, record year for Breadline Britain.

In its 115-page report, “Nothing Left in the Cupboards: Austerity, Welfare Cuts, and the Right to Food in the UK,” Human Rights Watch researchers focused on areas of high deprivation levels in Hull, Oxford and Cambs.

Experts carried out 126 interviews, including with families mired in food poverty, foodbank volunteers and school staff picking up the pieces as hungry pupils attended classes.

(Image: Julian Hamilton/Daily Mirror)

Analysts also studied official data and statistics, including information from the Government and local authorities.

It says many of those clobbered by austerity and going hungry were “single parent households led by women”.

Citing three factors it says have driven the surge in hunger, Human Rights Watch identifies how “successive governments since 2010 have slashed welfare spending in the name of austerity, with support to families and children disproportionately hit”.

Its analysis shows between 2010 and 2018, welfare to “assist children and families fell by 44%, far outstripping cuts in many other areas of government expenditure”.

It points to the benefit caps, welfare freeze and two-child limit as fuelling the crisis.

Researchers also highlight Whitehall’s flagship welfare overhaul, Universal Credit, which rolls six benefits into a single payment.

The scheme has “a punitive system of imposing ‘sanctions’ – withholding payments from welfare recipients – who fail to meet strict targets to prove that they have or are seeking work that are often impossible for people, especially single parents, to meet”, claims Human Right Watch.

The group accuses ministers of burying their heads in the sand as foodbank use exploded.

“The UK government has largely ignored and failed to act on growing evidence of a stark deterioration in the standard of living for the country’s poorest residents, including skyrocketing foodbank use, and multiple reports from school officials that many more children are arriving at school hungry and unable to concentrate,” it says.

“It has yet to fully acknowledge its own responsibility, and the direct impact of many of its policies, for the hunger crisis or to take adequate steps to address it.

“In particular, the UK government has done little to address the significant structural problems with welfare policy that leave families unable to put food on the table.”

Mr Raj said: “The way the UK Government has handled its reduction in welfare spending has left parents unable to feed their children in the fifth-largest economy in the world.

“The UK Government should ensure everyone’s right to food rather than expecting charities to step in and fill the gap.”

Trussell Trust policy director Garry(CORR) Lemon said: “Our benefits system was created to make sure proper support would be in place for each other when help was most needed – at the very least, this support should include food and shelter.

“But right now, more and more people across Britain are struggling to make ends meet, unable to afford food and facing hunger as a result; this isn’t right.

“We’ve seen record need for foodbanks in the last year; our network gave out 1.6 million emergency food parcels - that’s a 19% increase in need on the year before.

“The key driver for this rise was incomes not covering the cost of essentials – and the overwhelming majority of these incomes came from benefits, such as disability payments and Universal Credit.

“Tens of billions of pounds have been taken out of our benefits system in recent years. Enough is enough.”

(Image: Empics Entertainment)

Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Margaret Greenwood said: “It is unacceptable that anyone has to rely on a foodbank in one of the richest countries in the world.

“Yet the stark reality is that many families in the UK are being pushed into poverty and are struggling to put food on the table.

“Responsibility for this growing crisis lies firmly at the door of the Conservatives’ cruel social security cuts and their failure to tackle low pay and insecure work.

“The Government must wake up to this catastrophe, end the benefit freeze immediately, stop the rollout of Universal Credit and make ending poverty the priority it should be.”

A Government spokeswoman said: “It’s misleading to present these findings as representative of England as a whole.

“We’re helping parents to move into work to give families the best opportunity to move out of poverty, and it’s working.

“Employment is at a record high and children growing up in working households are five times less likely to be in relative poverty.

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“We spend £95billion a year on working-age benefits and we’re supporting over one million of the country’s most disadvantaged children through free school meals.

“Meanwhile, we’ve confirmed that the benefit freeze will end next year.”