THIS winter more and more of our fellow citizens will go hungry. In Scotland and across the UK people who have never suffered from food insecurity before will, for the first time, not have enough food to feed themselves and their families.

This is a very real and immediate human rights crisis that needs a very real and immediate response.

Last Friday, The Larder hosted a National Emergency Food Summit. We issued an open invitation to statutory and non statutory organisations, voluntary and community groups, politicians, trade unions, academics and individuals, from across Scotland, to come together in an effort to find a collective way forward to put food into people’s bellies this winter.

Over 70 people, from organisations across Scotland, participated in a refreshing, solution-focused discussion to identify how we ensure that no-one in Scotland goes hungry this winter.

While the recent focus has understandably been on soaring energy bills, hunger and food insecurity has fallen off the political and media agenda.

Many charities and community organisations working on the front line report a fall in financial and food donations at the same time as grant support from national and local governments is in freefall. People are struggling to feed their own families, never mind trying to help feed others.

So, as levels of hunger increase the capacity of communities to respond is in decline. In such circumstances it would be understandable if people gave up trying to respond to such overwhelming need but we can’t.

There is a moral imperative to act, we cannot allow our fellow citizens to go without the most basic necessity for life: food.

On Friday we heard from Luis Felipe Yanes, a human rights lawyer from the Scottish Human Rights Commission on the right to food and the lessons to be learnt from other countries.  We also heard from Dr Stephanie Chambers of Glasgow University on the importance of food in nourishing the brain, body and community.

We held workshops looking at hunger and the right to food from a children’s, young persons and older people’s perspective and we heard contributions and ideas from those who have experienced hunger and people working on the front line of this human rights crisis.

Many of the people and organisations who attended were the ones who stepped up heroically during the pandemic to provide meals to people in need. We all agreed that the difference now is that this crisis is avoidable.  

As the need for emergency food is growing the third sector is struggling to keep up with demand; The Larder itself is at maximum capacity for our lifeline ready meal programme.

During our open discussions and workshops a number of consistent themes emerged.

• A demand that no-one goes hungry this winter.
• Recognition that this is a human rights emergency that requires a human rights response and the right to food should be at the heart of that response.
• That legislative change is required now to enshrine the right to good food in Scots law.
• That national and local government must respond in the same way as they did during the Covid pandemic.

The third sector remains the closest to those that need our support and the government should recognise this in the same way that they did during Covid by providing emergency funding.

There was general consensus that the “cash first’” approach adopted by anti-poverty campaigners across Scotland is indeed the desired model but the reality is that any human rights approach must include the right to food at its very core and that the call for this to be enshrined in Scots law should be central to the campaigning messages of anti-poverty campaigners, trade unions and third sector organisations.  

The national emergency food summit ended with a real sense of unity, urgency and purpose. It is now up to the Scottish government and local government partners to respond with the same sense of urgency and purpose.

Angela Moohan is the chief executive of The Larder, a charity fighting poverty and hunger with dignity.