Nearly one million people forced to use food banks in the last year

David Cameron and his party may be claiming that the cost of living crisis is over – but perhaps they should speak to the nearly one million people who were forced to rely on emergency food aid from food banks in the past year. 913,138 adults and children received three days’ emergency food and support from Trussell Trust food banks in the last 12 months – that’s a rise of 163% on the number who were helped in the previous financial year.

Here’s how food bank use has grown on Cameron’s watch:

Use of food banks has increased more than ten-fold in just a few years. To put that into perspective, 330,205 children – children! – used a food bank in the past year. That’s almost as many as the total number of food bank recipients in total the year before.