Food inflation means more and more of people’s incomes are being spent on the essentials. Grocery inflation is at a 14-year high meaning the average UK food bill has gone up by over £450 a year.
It is getting harder to make the weekly food shop add up and it now isn’t just the poorest who are relying on foodbanks or cutting meals. Many public service workers have told UNISON that they have visited a foodbank for the first time this year, or that they miss meals to enable their children to eat.
Ending hunger is about more than food – it is low pay and poverty that leave people unable to afford enough to eat. But while the focus has to be on raising pay so that no family is in this position, there is an immediate problem now that needs immediate solutions.
Despite the sacrifices made by parents, for many children and young people, the only decent meal of the day will be what they’re served at school. That is why, as the largest union representing school meals workers, UNISON is campaigning to expand free school meal provision, to ensure all primary children have access to free school meals.