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The Archbishop of Canterbury, The Most Reverend Justin Welby, delivers his sermon to members of the congregation, during the Maundy Thursday service at St. Anthony's Church in Alkham, Kent
The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Rt Reverend Justin Welby, endorses a demand that the Government supports a new network for “Feeding Britain” Photo: Gareth Fuller/PA
 
More than four million tonnes of food is being wasted by supermarkets and farmers every year because of customers’ exacting standards, a report into hunger in Britain has revealed. 
“Scandalously huge” volumes of perfectly edible fruit, vegetables, bread, meat and milk is send for landfill, or burnt for energy at taxpayers’ expense, because it fails to meet the “cosmetic” demands of consumers, a report drawn up by MPs and backed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Rt Reverend Justin Welby, will say today. 
In a highly political intervention, the Archbishop endorses a demand that the Government supports a new network for “Feeding Britain”, with a package of measures that could cost £150 million.
He yesterday said the sight of “ashamed” families visiting food banks shocked him more than the starvation he had seen in Congolese refugee camps. 

The report, from the All Party All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Hunger reveals that just 0.1 per cent of all “surplus” food fit for human consumption is donated to food banks and other schemes to help the poor, compared to nearly 32 per cent in the United States, the report reveals. 

It warned that the use of “best before” and “display until” labels is causing shops to discard fresh foods. 

The “cosmetic standards” demanded by supermarkets is also encouraging waste, with some farmers losing up to 20 per cent of their carrot harvest thanks to retailers refusing to accept “wonky” vegetables. 

In total, retailer discard 0.4 million tonnes of food while producers send 3.9 million tonnes to landfill or spreading a year. 

One food bank manager told the inquiry that he was offered 9,864 Cornish pasties because a lorry was 17 minutes late for his distribution deadline to Morrisons. He was also offered 30,000 spring greens that were due to be reploughed into the fields, and 10 tonnes of tomatoes that were deemed “too big for Tesco”, the report said. 

Morrisons said it was “puzzled” by the claim, saying it is not company policy to turn away fresh food. 

The report claims the taxpayer is paying for thousands of tonnes of food to be destroyed for green energy, through a process known as anaerobic digestion. A £10 million fund subsidises the programme, at a rate of £70 a tonne. 

The report finds there are now around 1,500 food banks providing emergency meals to the poor, and their numbers have risen steeply under the Coalition. 

It blames telephone companies, energy giants, water firms and government premium rate phone lines for “ripping off” poor customers and leaving them unable to afford food. 

It calls on ministers to drive up the minimum wage, expand the system of school meals and loosen the regime of benefits sanctions, including introducing a ‘yellow card’ for people who face having payments docked. 

However, the report notes that phenomenon of working families being unable to afford food is not unique to Britain or the sole fault of the current government, but a result of “fundamental” changes in advanced Western economies, with a decline in skilled manufacturing and a growth of low-paid work over thirty years. 

Between 2004 and 2011, the share of income spent on housing, food and utilities increased for the first time in post-war Britain, leaving smaller disposable incomes. 

That was in part because Britain has seen some of the highest levels of inflation in the West. Prices have risen 30.4 per cent in the decade since 2013, compared to 28.4 per cent in the US, 19.8 per cent in France and 19.6 per cent in Germany. 

Writing the report’s introduction, the Rt Rev Tim Thornton, the Bishop of Thornton, said more people are going hunger because the “social glue” of friendships and family life has disappeared, meaning neighbours living “individualistic and isolated lives” cannot rely on each other for help. 

Damian Green, the former policing minister, said that food banks “work well” as charities and the Government should have no role in running them, as the report suggests. 

“What they’re saying is that the welfare state should take over food banks, should nationalise food banks. All that would mean would be we’re spending a bit more on welfare so I’m not quite sure what the additional value is.” 

He said the Archbishop must accept he will face criticism if he wants to intervene in political affairs. 

"I don’t mind church leaders intervening in political issues as long as they then accept that they are in the political arena. There is then a slight feeling of well, it’s the Archbishop of Canterbury you mustn’t disagree with him. Well actually, I do disagree with him in some respects.”
Matt Hancock, the business minister, said food bank use had increased “because more people know about them”. 

A Cabinet Office spokesman said: "This report is a serious contribution to an important debate, and recognises that the reasons behind demands for emergency food assistance are complex and frequently overlapping. 

"As a country we have enough food to go around, and we agree that it is wrong that anyone should go hungry at the same time as surplus food is going to waste. There is a moral argument as well as a sustainability one to ensure we make the best use of resources.”

Families who spend a quarter of income on cigarettes

FAMILIES are being driven to food banks because they spend up to a quarter of their income on smoking, the report suggests. 

Children are going hungry because parents are addicted to alcohol, gambling and prioritise catalogue purchases over buying food, it found. 

A family with an income of £21,000 a year where both parents smoke 20 cigarettes a day will spend a quarter of their income on tobacco. 

It urges the state introduce cookery lessons for parents because some are unable to produce a meal from scratch, leaving them reliant on expensive ready meals and takeaways. 

The panel said they were confronted with the “unpleasant truth” is that an unknown number of children go to school hungry because of the “chaotic conditions in their homes”.
It says schools should report such parents to social workers. 

“A large proportion of primary schools that submitted evidence to the Inquiry said they had witnessed children arriving at school hungry because their parents could not, or would not, wake up to make them breakfast, or bring them to the school breakfast club,” the report says. 

“We heard also that some families did not have enough money to afford decent food as their income was devoted almost entirely to having to pay off debts from catalogues, credit companies and payday lenders.”

It said children who try to help vulnerable children should be applauded but adds: “We should not leave the duty resting with schools. Parents have duties, and these duties are not abated by the chaos resulting from their lifestyle”.
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