The Archbishop of Canterbury has said he was left more shocked by the plight of Britain’s hunger-stricken poor than the suffering in African refugee camps.
Most Revd Justin Welby said food is being wasted at “astonishing” levels in the UK but hunger “stalks large parts” of the country.
Speaking to The Mail on Sunday he said even families with jobs are being forced to turn to food banks to make ends meet.
He’s made the comments a day before a parliamentary report that sets out a blueprint to eliminate hunger in Britain by 2020 is published.
The archbishop has been supporting the report and said what he had seen in the UK, although less ‘serious’ than the situation in Africa, had shocked him more.
He said: “In one corner of a refugee camp in the Democratic Republic of Congo was a large marquee. Inside were children, all ill. They had been separated from family, friends, those who looked after them.
“Perhaps, mostly having disabilities, they had been abandoned in the panic of the militia attack that drove them from their homes. Now they were hungry.
“It was deeply shocking but, tragically, expected. A few weeks later in England, I was talking to some people – a mum, dad and one child – in a food bank.
“They were ashamed to be there. The dad talked miserably. He said they had each been skipping a day’s meals once a week in order to have more for the child, but then they needed new tyres for the car so they could get to work at night, and just could not make ends meet.
“So they had to come to a food bank. They were treated with respect, love even, by the volunteers from local churches. But they were hungry, and ashamed to be hungry.
“I found their plight more shocking. It was less serious, but it was here. And they weren’t careless with what they had – they were just up against it. It shocked me that being up against it at the wrong time brought them to this stage. There are many like them. But we can do something about it.”
The exact details of the parliamentry report is not known but it’s reported it could call for the government to extend free school meals to the holiday period.
Archbishop Justin also urged supermarkets to give food they could not sell to the poor rather than throw it away.
“At least some of the food being sent to the incinerator should be used as a force for good to help [the poor] out of the rut in which they find themselves,” he said.
He added: “We need to make it easier for food companies to give edible surplus food to charities and still encourage them to send inedible food for energy production.
“The big names in the food business have a moral obligation to communities. We need to make sure that the financial incentives in their industry don’t act against their moral instincts…Read More
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