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The young couple trudge into the church hall looking gaunt, meek and beaten.

They have walked for three miles in heavy rain, their thin clothing so drenched it sticks to their skin as they huddle by a radiator for warmth.

Across the room, a 34-year-old mother weeps into her hands as her shopping trolley is filled with food which will stop her two children going to bed that night with hunger pains.

Over by the racks of second-hand jackets, shirts and jumpers on sale for 20p each, sit two jobless men without a penny in their pockets, pondering how the three-day emergency rations they’ve just been handed can last a week-and-a-half.

Behind them a smartly dressed couple who’ve never been on benefits before suffer the indignity of explaining how they have lost their jobs and home and cannot feed their three kids.

Welcome to the second city of the seventh richest nation on earth, and the sight of desperate people begging for charity at a food bank to keep themselves and their loved ones alive.

Welcome to the reality of modern Britain as the Government cuts bite deeper and deeper into our battered communities.

When this Government took power there were 79 official food banks in the UK, handing out basic items such as dried pasta, soup and tinned fish to people in dire need.

This week the Trussell Trust, which runs them, opened its 201st.

Last year they fed 128,000 people, distributing 1,225tonnes of food donated by churches, businesses and the general public.

If the cuts continue on the current scale, they estimate that half-a-million Britons will need emergency food supplies by 2015.

Most of the people handing over their vouchers at the Birmingham Central Food Bank at Ladywood Methodist Church aren’t homeless or destitute, but hard-working individuals who have hit tough times.

Men made redundant, mothers who’ve had their benefits cut, families who’ve been refused crisis loans or seen their low incomes swallowed up by inflation, all of whom were referred to the food bank by health workers or JobCentre advisers.

Michael Bradbury, 55, had until recently worked in construction, but now walks up to five hours a day looking for jobs which are becoming harder to find as sacked public sector workers join the dole queues.

He receives £130 a fortnight in benefits, gives £60 to his landlord, leaving him with so little, most weeks it runs out.

The trip to the food bank makes him feel “really guilty” and, as grateful as he is for the three-day supplies, he says: “This has got to last me nine days. I’ll have to eat every other day, and drink water on the days in between.”

Jobless catering worker Michael Field, 35, is also deeply embarrassed at begging for food but says: “I’ve got no choice, I’m really struggling.

"There’s now so many people out there looking for work, there’s not enough to go around. I see more and more people becoming homeless. Soon there will be hundreds on the streets begging.”

The figures make grim reading.

In some parts of Birmingham more than 50% of working-age people are out of a job, and long-term youth unemployment across the city has almost doubled in the past year, with over 5,000 youngsters stuck on benefits for six months or longer.

(Image: Daily Mirror/Jeremy Williams)

Jameel Mohammed, 42, was a chef at a take-away restaurant, living above the shop with his wife Tanzila.

When it closed they lost everything and the lengthy delay in receiving their benefits has stretched them to breaking point.

“I feel deep shame,” says Tanzila. “But we need help for our three children. These are very hard times.” As I leave her, she says: “Pray for me.”

When Birmingham’s two central food banks were set up six months ago only a handful of people used them.

Today, around 60 people turn up on the two weekday mornings they are open, with each attendee allowed only three visits.

Manager Patricia Hoskins puts the blame for the surge in demand on Government cuts.

She says: “There’s less support agencies now so people have nowhere to go for help.

"Plus there are fewer crisis loans being handed out at a time when more and more people are facing real hardship.

“The cuts to benefits, especially the changes to incapacity benefit, has really left people struggling. And it will get even worse with the changes to tax credits.

"The problem is that there’s no transitional period. No bridge. It’s done to the most vulnerable people and it’s lethal.”

Patricia has heard some distressing tales – like the mother who stopped eating to feed her older children, but who then became so malnourished she was unable to produce breast milk to feed her baby.

“Some of the redundancies are heartbreaking,” she says. “One man worked for a company which had its Government funding stopped.

"He went from living in a plush city centre flat to being homeless. You learn from working here that we’re all just one pay cheque away from poverty.”

The £312million cuts imposed on Birmingham by the Coalition Government, and Coalition-run city council, are believed to be the biggest in local government history.

As the Labour group points out, Birmingham has lost £164 per person from its funding while Tory-controlled Wokingham, Berks, has lost just £19 per head.

More than £15million has been slashed from voluntary sector funding, affecting 190 charities, whereas Ashford in Kent has been given an extra £1million.

West Midlands Fire Service will lose £9.2million between 2011-13 while Hampshire will gain £2million.

And West Midlands Police have been forced to cut 1,250 officers by 2015 but true-blue Surrey will gain 69 officers.

One of those former West Midlands officers is Tim Kennedy, whose story highlights the utter stupidity of removing police from the front line.

He had given more than 34 years’ exemplary service to the force and had been awarded over 30 commendations.

Yet last year, along with every officer with more than 30 years’ service, he was issued with an A19 notice, and forced to retire.

He said: “I was absolutely gutted. Not just for me but the victims I was helping. I was only 52, and at the top of my game, but there was nothing I could do.”

(Image: Daily Mirror/Jeremy Williams)

The cuts-led decision to make no exceptions was illogical on every level.

Financially, policemen like Tim were handed big pay-offs and healthy pensions but, with crime rising, the effect of taking officers of such calibre out of the front line was soon realised.

Last summer, as riots hit Birmingham, police had to be re-hired via private security firms.

Tim, who is still angry about his treatment, refused to go back out of principle.

“I was totally married to the job, and did it so well, and suddenly it was taken away from me,” he says.

“As I watched those riots I thought, ‘I should be out there’. If all the other officers they got rid of had been out there as well, perhaps we’d have had an effect on the streets.”

A meeting was arranged between Tim and Home Secretary Theresa May by Birmingham Labour MP Jack Dromey so he could point out the insanity of the front line cuts. Tim wasn’t impressed.

“She wiped her hands clean, saying it wasn’t the Government who retired me but the West Midlands Police,” he recalls.

“But they had no option but to slash costs. She just passed the buck.”

Anger in Birmingham towards this Government goes right across the political spectrum.

Mike Hughes, 64, has voted Tory for 40 years but won’t do so again after the cruel treatment he and fellow blind people have received.

He was a successful executive for a US company – until three years ago when he lost his sight. Today he can make out only shadows.

But because Mike can get around using a long cane and doesn’t need a guide dog he’s been deemed fit for work, even though he can’t dress himself without his wife’s help.

That means he will lose his higher-rate mobility allowance, making him £74 a week worse off.

He says: “Despite being registered blind I have had to prove every step of the way that my eyesight has gone. To keep getting told you don’t qualify has been a personal nightmare.

“I paid my taxes and naively believed that there was a safety net called social security which took care of people like me.

"But what I found was a service in disarray with big holes driven through it by this Conservative Government. I can’t support them any more after 40 years.

“They’re not listening and don’t understand. They keep getting it wrong. I can’t find a job and I’ll be stuck in the house as there’s no community transport.

"They’re driving me into isolation and into depression. I feel I’m facing death by a thousand cuts.”

In the second city of the seventh richest country on earth, Mike is far from alone.