MORE than one million emergency food parcels are needed for this winter as foodbanks face an ever-growing need, a damning report has found.

Trussell Trust, which supports more than 1,300 foodbank centres across Britain, said that a total of 904,000 emergency food parcels were provided between December 2022 and February 2023 — but “unprecedented need” could see that figure topped this winter.

Trussell Trust chief executive Emma Revie said that while food banks are not the answer in the long term, they are vital as “we continue to fight for the change that could mean they can be closed for good.”

She said: “Together, we have roots into hundreds of communities, and while someone facing hunger can’t change the structural issues driving the need for food banks on their own, thousands of us coming together can.

“We must end hunger across the country so that no one needs a food bank to survive.”

National Education Union general secretary Daniel Kebede said that the charity’s warning is a “damning sign that the government has failed to support people through the cost-of-living crisis and presided over a decline in living standards.”

Calling the increase last year “nothing short of an emergency,” he said studies have shown that children in families forced to use food banks receive lower GCSE grades.

“And we know that many more people are living in deep poverty than when the cost-of-living crisis started to take effect,” Mr Kebede said.

“Poverty and child hunger have tremendous social and moral costs and the government must act now to reverse this worrying trend.”

He called for free school meals for all children to ensure that no child goes hungry while in school and said that lifting the two-child limit would take 250,000 children out of poverty overnight.