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Poor people could learn about nutrition by eating from wartime rations, a Tory MP suggested today.

Philip Hollobone told the Commons low income households should take lessons from the 1940s on how to eat nutritious food on a tight budget.

Labour MPs seized on his remarks as evidence the Government was failing to get to grips with the "scale of hunger" felt by millions across Britain.

Mr Hollobone, MP for Kettering, asked ministers if lessons could be learned from the wartime generation on "how best to feed our people".

(Image: Coventry Telegraph)

He said: "Food insecurity is a terrible thing and it's exacerbated by low-income households spending too much on food that isn't good for them.

"During the war, the wartime generation knew how to manage on a very tight budget and nutrition actually improved for most households, including the very poorest.

"Could we learn some lessons from the wartime generation on how best to feed our people?"

(Image: AFP) (Image: NCJ Archive)

Environment minister George Eustice set out a number of government initiatives designed to help people keep nutritious diets which he claimed could be adopted at a "remarkably stable" price.

He said: "My colleagues in the Department of Health do publish lots of very good guidance and run lots of very good campaigns to encourage healthy eating.

"In addition, we do have the school food plan which is aiming to improve the nutrition of food in schools so that children learn lifelong good habits.

(Image: Sunday Sun)

"But I agree with you that actually it is possible to eat very, very good nutritious food and the cost and price of it has been remarkably stable."

But Labour accused the government of looking the other way over hunger which MPs said was exacerbated by "punitive welfare reform policies".

Emma Lewell-Buck, MP for South Shields, said: "We have an estimated 8.4 million people in Britain living in food-insecure households.

"There have been repeated calls from myself, from the cross-party APPG (all-party parliamentary group) on Hunger, from the Efra select committee, the Food Foundation, Sustain and Oxfam for the Government to adopt a household food-insecurity measurement.

"Why won't the Government just admit the fact is the resistance to introducing this measurement is because, once you've admitted the scale of hunger, then the Government will have to do something about it, and admit it's largely caused by their own punitive welfare reform policies?"

Mr Eustice said he "fundamentally disagreed" with Mrs Lewell-Buck, adding: "This Government has got more people back into work than ever before and the best way to tackle poverty is to help people off benefits and get them into work."