Record numbers of people using food banks a new report for the Trussell Trust shows.

The Trussell trust says that it distributed 1,332,952 three- day food parcels between April 2017 and the end of March, a 13% increase on last year. Out of these 484,026 were given to children.

The trust operates 428 food banks around the UK, serving an average of 666,476 unique users every year, most of whom visit at least twice.

A report published by the Trussell Trust in April, ‘Left Behind: Is Universal Credit Truly Universal?, based on a survey of 248 people using their food banks shows the impact of the initial wait to claim Universal Credit and the failure of payments to cover the cost of living on individuals and households.

Amongst the other reasons for using a food bank given by respondents were low income (28%), debt (9%) and benefits delays (24%). All these show significant rises over the past year.

As a whole the number of people using food banks has risen by 52% in the year following the year since the roll out of Universal Credit began.

Launching the report Emma Revie, the chief executive of the Trussell Trust spoke about the challenges people using their food banks face, including illness, unemployment and family breakdown, saying ‘as a nation we expect no one should be left hungry’, adding that ‘we owe it to each other to make sure sufficient financial support is in place for those who need it most'.

The charity is calling on the government to ‘uprate’ Universal Credit so that payments meet the cost of living and for councils to offer more support to people who are struggling.

Emma Revie said Universal Credit was the ‘future of our benefits system' and as such it was ‘vital’ the government got it right to prevent further suffering for vulnerable people.

There is no doubting the good work done by the Trussell Trust and its many volunteers in communities across the country. It is though worrying that they take such a, perhaps unconsciously, defeatist attitude to Universal Credit.

Far from being, as Emma Revie suggests, the ‘future’ of the benefits system it seems like an attempt to drag welfare policy back into its dark and troubling past. The sour faced suspicion and institutional cruelty are painfully redolent of Victorian workhouse committees.

This isn’t a bold new approach to dealing with the long -standing problems of economic inequality, let alone the fresh challenges automation will bring. It is, at best, an exercise in playing to the lowest political denominator on the unthinking right; at worst, it could be the driver of the sort of right wing fundamentalism.

What is needed is some real fresh thinking. The sort that looks beyond the five- year political cycle and asks questions that can only have troubling answers.

Questions like is it time to move away from the orthodoxy that says the market has a solution to every problem and is the Protestant work ethic now doing us more harm than good?

This will not be an easy process and every group that takes part will see some of its cherished standpoints if not overthrown then certainly cast in an unflattering light. If we ignore it though, then as the rise in food bank use shows, inequality will continue to grow and with it the threat to our democracy.