Labour Manifesto: Food banks

“Just look at the last seven [years of Conservative government]... More people queueing at food banks.”

• The number of uses of Trussell Trust food banks has gone up since 2010 from 41,000 to 1.2 million.
• These figures don’t show all food bank use: the Trussell Trust is the largest food bank network in the UK, but estimates from a few years ago suggest it may only account for half of UK food banks.
• We don’t know exactly how many individual people use them. The Trust estimates the average person using a food bank does so twice in a year, so that’s about 590,000 people in 2016/17.
• The number of food banks has also increased since 2010, so more people have access to one now. That means we can’t be sure how much of the increasing use of food banks is due to increasing demand.

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