The UK’s biggest food bank network, the Trussell Trust, highlighted the impact of welfare cuts and delays as it announced it was on course to deliver the highest number of emergency food parcels in its history this year.

The charity’s food distribution figures, which have come to be seen as a barometer of poverty and austerity, show that its 420 food banks gave out 519,000 parcels in the six months between April and the end of September.

Trussell said problems with social security payments, including administrative delays and benefit sanctions, were the biggest single reason why individuals were signposted to food banks during the period, accounting for 44% of all referrals.

By April the trust expects to have given out more food parcels than the 1.1m it gave out during the year to April 2016. Food bank use grew rapidly after 2013 but has stabilised at just over a million parcels annually since 2015.

Trussell Trust chief executive David McAuley said: “To stop UK hunger we must make sure the welfare system works fairly and compassionately, stopping people getting to a point where they have no money to eat.”

The trust’s latest food bank figures came as charity campaigners revealed huge variations in the extent of child poverty across the UK. The End Child Poverty coalition said that in some areas almost half of children lived in poverty, compared to one in 10 in others. The national rate is 29%.



The parliamentary constituency with the highest level of child poverty was Birmingham Ladywood at 47.3%. There were 12 constituencies with rates at over 40%, including four in London and three in Greater Manchester.

Tower Hamlets in east London was the local authority with the highest child poverty rates, at 43.5%, while the highest concentration of child poverty at council ward level in the UK was 54.8% in Princes Park, in Liverpool.

Two Scottish constituencies, Gordon, and West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, had the lowest child poverty rates, at 9.2% and 9.9% respectively, closely followed by Sheffield Hallam (10%). The council with the lowest level of child poverty, at 10.4%, was Wokingham, in Berkshire.

The Trussell Trust called on the government to establish special telephone hotlines between food banks and the Department for Work and Pensions to enable volunteers to try and resolve food bank client’s welfare problems more speedily.

The Department for Work and Pensions played down the link drawn by Trussell between benefit delays and food bank use. A spokesman said: “Reasons for food bank use are complex, so it’s misleading to link them to any one issue, and the vast majority of benefits are processed on time.”

Frank Field MP, the chair of the Commons work and pensions select committee, said the figures showed that “large numbers of people comprising Britain’s vulnerable human underbelly” were going hungry.



He added that the Trussell Trust figures were unlikely to give the full picture of hunger in the UK. There were likely to be at least as many people again who have sought help from independent food banks, while others still would have suffered hunger without relying on charity food.

Debbie Abrahams, shadow secretary of state for work and pensions, said: “The Trussell Trust report showing that the UK is on course for a record number of people needing to use emergency food parcels is a damning indictment of the Tory government’s failure.



“Even more staggering in the run-up to Christmas is almost 200,000 children will be relying on a food parcel to get a decent meal. It is clear that delays in benefits payments and changes to eligibility are a major cause behind this increase.”

Last month an Oxford University study found there was a robust link between increases in the number of benefit sanctions handed out and rising numbers of adults receiving food parcels.