I KNOW IT sounds absurd, but many people I speak to who need the help of foodbanks or soup kitchens are embarrassed to go there, often because they come from a generation where there is stigma attached. 

There should be no stigma towards people in poverty — the stigma is with the government that relentlessly pushed austerity on us.  

Nevertheless, we are still fighting an uphill struggle with people being in need, being in working poverty, living off a state pension (which is not a benefit, it is something they paid for through their tax) who consider it shameful. 

We can talk about it on social media until the cows come home, but the way to change this attitude is by going there ourselves, even if we do not need to — eat there, talk to people, because often those who go there regularly are deprived of social contact. 

When you go, be sociable and, if you can afford it, donate money, in the way you would pay the bill in a restaurant.

This is about showing solidarity, it is letting them know that they are not outcasts. If somebody who could afford to go to a restaurant goes there by choice, it will go a long way to remove the sense of shame some people feel. 

Being in need and in food and fuel poverty does not mean you have no right to have any kind of human dignity. 

It does not and should never mean that you should feel ashamed for having been forced into that dreadful situation.

In campaigned to be a Labour member of the Westminster Parliament, and am the last person who wants to make foodbanks and soup kitchens the new normality.  

I can’t wait for a government that will remove the dreadful need for them, but at the same time, while they are still needed as a means of survival, I want to show the people who do depend on them that they are not alone, that they have my solidarity and that they are valuable people in their own right.

I started the hashtag #foodbankfriday not to make foodbanks and the need for them more normal, but to draw attention to the glaring social injustice that makes them so necessary because otherwise people would suffer and possibly die. 

If we stop talking about it, it becomes the new normal. We can’t afford to do that. We don’t just need to talk about it, we need to shout about it, everywhere and all the time, and we need to show the people depending on them that they are not alone, that we are not giving them charity but solidarity.

To put it quite bluntly, the myth the Tories are trying to force on us that dire poverty could never happen to “hard-working people” and that the so-called middle class is safe carries about as much truth as the slogan on the Boris bus during the 2016 Brexit campaign. 

The only difference between the working and middle class at the moment is how many days, weeks or months you are away from needing a foodbank or being homeless. 

It is something that could happen to each and every one of us, unless we are independently wealthy — a simple twist of fate, an illness, could throw our life upside down, remove everything we took for granted and throw us at the mercy of a system that has removed compassion or social justice.

Let’s not create artificial barriers between white- and blue-collar jobs, because in the final analysis, divide and conquer was always what worked for the Tories. 

Let us stand together, show true solidarity, because when it comes down to it, we are all in the same boat.

In 2018 we saw a 13 per cent increase of emergency foodbank rations compared with the previous year, where the increase was 6 per cent — and sadly enough that trend continues, while our government is still telling us that we are living in one of the richest economies on the planet. 

However, I maintain that a country that can’t look after its own people is not truly rich. We should judge a society not on how the people in the highest income bracket live, but on how it treats the people who need a social safety net. 

That is the meaning of collectivism — that is, taking collective responsibility for each other and caring about each other not just at Christmas, but every day of the year. 

Dr Adrian Heald is former Labour parliamentary candidate for Mid-Norfolk (2019) and is a consultant physician.