New figures have revealed that as many as 25,000 children on Merseyside have accessed food banks in the past 12 months.
Statistics from the Trussell Trust, set up to combat hunger in the UK, show that around 60,000 people in the region were reliant on the group’s handouts.
That figure includes around 25,000 children who are feared to be facing a food shortage in the current summer holidays without the aid of free school meals.
Thousands of others are thought to have accessed food banks not affiliated with the Trussell Trust.
Frank Field, MP for Birkenhead, chairs the Parliamentary group looking to reduce hunger that commissioned a report ‘Feeding Britain’ last year.
The findings revealed that as many as two thirds of the UK children’s population live in poverty with working families, many on zero-hour contracts.
“We are seeing that hunger is a huge problem for families, and for many this is worse during school holidays,” Mr Field told the Liverpool Echo.
“Losing that one hot meal in the day makes a big difference to those who are already struggling with unreliable income from wages and benefits, and the inability to pay the bills from this income.
“Each day an unknown number of children go to bed hungry and take that hunger with them into school.
“At the same time we taxpayers pay supermarkets and food manufacturers to turn into energy the food that could end that hunger. This amounts to a huge national disgrace.
“There are some evils in this world which we find impossibly hard to counter. That should not be true of hunger in Britain.”