THE Trussell Trust has backed the recommendations of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Food Poverty and Hunger saying that it is important to “keep on the pressure”.

MP for Salisbury John Glen contributed heavily to the report that made a number of recommendations on how to tackle hunger in the UK.

It has been 14 years since Paddy Henderson started The Trussell Trust’s first food bank in Salisbury because he met a local mum who could not feed her children that night.

Now the charity has launched over 400 foodbanks nationwide that gave three days’ emergency food to over 910,000 people last year – including over 5,000 people in Salisbury.

In a joint statement Trust Chairman Chris Mould and CEO David McAuley have said that the debate should be above party politics and that Salisbury should continue to lead the way in combating food poverty.

They said: “The generosity and compassion of the people of Salisbury over a decade ago sparked hundreds of communities to follow suit, helping to start a foodbank movement that the All Party Parliamentary Group on Food Poverty and Hunger likened to a ‘social Dunkirk’.

“Since the APPG published its ‘Feeding Britain’ report on December 8, barely a day has passed when foodbanks have not been in the news.

“We’ve seen many readers of the Journal joining the important national debate about ‘the hunger that stalks our land’.

“But what can and should we be doing to help stop people going hungry here in Salisbury and across the UK?

“The first step is practical: giving food to make sure everyone has enough today. There is talk of economic recovery but, put simply, it’s not yet filtering down.

Over Christmas hundreds of local Salisbury families received emergency food and hampers from the Salisbury foodbank.

“We’ve seen parents who received hampers cry with relief at being able to put food on the table and kids ecstatic because they got some chocolate.

Salisbury people make this possible.

“But we want to see longer term change too, we need to help stop so many people going hungry and needing foodbanks tomorrow.

“Importantly, the APPG ‘Feeding Britain’ report gives cross-party acknowledgement that hunger in the UK is real – and that action is needed.

“Salisbury’s own MP John Glen has been very supportive of The Trussell Trust and has played an important role as a key member of the APPG Inquiry Panel.

“The Inquiry doesn’t pull its punches and has made a host of well thought through recommendations that, if acted on by all the key players, would make a massive dent in the problem of hunger that haunts our society and blights the lives of many, many of our poorest citizens.

“So we need to keep the pressure on. We need to see government, businesses, regulators and the voluntary sector committed to taking real action to stop hunger. We need them to sign up to implement the recommendations of the APPG report. This is beyond party politics.

“Salisbury has led the way on combating hunger, so let’s keep on speaking out to help stop food poverty because we still have a hungry Britain and the task of fixing things is a big one.”