THE right to food must be enshrined in British law, campaigners demanded today as new figures show a dramatic surge in online searches for local foodbanks. 

Foodbanks are on their knees, with the majority struggling to meet the huge need of people going hungry, right to food campaigner Carl Walker told a meeting in Liverpool. 

Mr Walker, who is also the deputy leader of Worthing council, said a local foodbank he helped to set up is now feeding up to 500 people a week, up from just 14 families two years ago.

The campaigner, who was speaking at an event hosted by the World Transformed festival on Monday, made the case for a national right to food movement to end growing food poverty in Britain. This would include pushing for universal free school meals. 

Ian Byrne, MP for Liverpool West Derby, said: “The state has a statutory duty that you’ve got to send your child to school — the state should have a statutory duty to feed your child while they’re in school.” 

It comes as Labour released new figures on Monday revealing that there’s been a 250 per cent increase in google searches for “food banks near me” since March 2020. 

Commenting on the analysis, shadow work and pensions secretary Jonathan Ashworth said: “Never have so many families been forced to queue at foodbanks and asked for charity handouts,” saying that Labour would freeze energy prices to help struggling families. 

However Mr Byrne called on Labour to include the right to food in its next manifesto, a pledge previously made under former leader Jeremy Corbyn. 

Mr Walker said that an unspoken impact of foodbanks was the harm on people’s mental health, saying he has spoken to a “shocking number” of people who’ve contemplated suicide. 

“These people are not suffering from depression … it’s economic violence enacted on people,” he said. 

“People are being traumatised by the fact they are being forced to live in the indignity of hunger.” 

Pat Schan, a right-to-food campaigner in London, said that there were schoolchildren in the capital having to share their lunches with friends whose parents can’t afford food. 

“Hunger is a political choice, there is nothing inevitable about this,” she said. “This is the result of choices that Tory politicians have made and are continuing to make.”

While stressing that foodbanks should not exist, campaigners also called for an end to the “indignity” in the way some operate, saying that the referral system and means testing was “stigmatising” for people. 

Dave Kelly from the Fans Supporting Foodbanks group, an initiative started by football fans to help tackle food poverty in Liverpool, said pantries set up by the group were available to everyone who needed it without a referral and seek to “empower” communities.