Chronic hunger has affected a sizable proportion of the UK's population throughout its history. Following improved economic conditions that followed World War II, hunger became a less pressing issue. Yet since the 2007–2008 world food price crisis that began in late 2006 and especially since the Great Recession, long term hunger began to return as a prominent social problem. Albeit only affecting a small minority of the UK's population, by December 2013, according to a group of doctors and academics writing in the British Medical Journal, hunger in the UK had reached the level of a "public health emergency".
In the run-up to the 2015 general election, the issue of hunger in the UK became somewhat politicised, with right wing commentators expressing scepticism about figures presented by church groups and left-leaning activists. An All-Party MP group focusing on hunger in the UK has called for activists to be cautious in how they discuss the problem of domestic hunger, as exaggerated claims and political point scoring risk reducing public support for tackling the issue. In a 2016 report, the All-Party group stated it is not possible to accurately quantify the number of people suffering from hunger in the UK, and called for better collection of data. The UK government began the official measurement of food insecurity in 2019, The first report was published on 16 December 2021.
Hunger in the UK was worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic with some food banks reporting that demand had more than doubled. August 2020 saw the United Nations agency UNICEF begin funding charities helping to feed hungry UK children for the first time in its history.
Current issues
Size and growth of the problem Since about 2012, the return of hunger to the UK has featured prominently in British media. Despite the extensive coverage, as of 2016 it was still not possible to determine exactly how many people in the UK were experiencing chronic hunger due to insufficient data. Numerous reports, studies and estimates have been published however, with many but not all suggesting that for some sub sections of the population, the problem may have been growing worse since the 2008 financial crises. Research published by the OECD in 2014 had indicated hunger in the UK may be decreasing. The number of people answering yes to the question 'Have there been times in the past 12 months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?' decreased from 9.8% in 2007 to 8.1% in 2012.
According to a 2016 report by The Food foundation based on a telephone survey of 1,000 people, over eight million Britons experienced either moderate or severe food insecurity in 2014; over four million faced severe food insecurity. The report was based on UN data; in February 2019 the Guardian reported it remains the best recent estimate of the extent of hunger in the UK. Due to the relatively small survey size, however, its results should be considered indicative rather than definitive. Also, facing even severe food insecurity doesn't necessarily mean one is experiencing chronic hunger.
The rapid rise in the number of UK food banks since 2009 has often been used as evidence of growing hunger. Critics have argued that the rising food bank use does not prove this; it could just mean unscrupulous people are becoming more aware of food banks, and using their services not to save themselves from hunger, but to have more money free to spend on luxuries. Regression analysis published by Oxford University in 2015 found that it is largely need and not simply awareness of foodbanks that is causing the growth in usage. However the academics conducting the research agree that foodbank usage is not the best measure of hunger, saying that studies in other countries have suggested that most people suffering from food poverty don't use food banks.
Further indications of rising hunger include a growing number of infants and pregnant mothers suffering from anaemia; an increasing number of people diagnosed with malnutrition in UK hospitals; a rising number of children starting their first and primary year of primary school underweight. In 2015 for example, 6,367 children started reception class underweight, which is up 16% on 2012 figures. Official figures published in November 2016 indicated that the number of hospital beds assigned to folk suffering from malnutrition had nearly tripled in the last decade. Again though there is a need for caution on the extent to which such figures really reflect a rise in hunger – an NHS spokesperson said the rise may be partly explained by the health service getting better at identifying malnutrition. Malnutrition has been found to affect three quarters of women aged 16–49 indicated by them having less folic acid than the WHO recommended levels.
The UK government began collecting data related to hunger in the UK in 2019, with the first public reporting of this data due in March 2021. The 2020 UK COVID-19 outbreak and its associated lockdown had a "devastating impact" on people's ability to get needed food, with an April 2020 report finding as many as 1.5 million British people had recently gone a whole day without eating. While the UK lockdown had ended in 2021, hunger remained a concern into 2022, in part due to the ongoing UK cost of living crisis. By June 2023, according to surveys from The Food Foundation, 9 million UK adults (17% of households) experienced moderate or severe food insecurity, up from 7.3% in June 2021.
Among children
A 2012 study undertaken by Netmums found that one in five mothers would regularly miss out on meals so as to be able to save their children from going hungry. Also in 2012, London charity Kids Company named five inner London schools where 70% to 80% of pupils do not always have food at home or do not know how they will get their next meal. Children are sometimes visibly malnourished and some lose their adult teeth due to unhealthy diet. According to a March 2013 report, teachers in London schools said that at least five children per class turned up without having had breakfast, with 41% of teachers saying they believed the children's hunger led to symptoms such as fainting.
The UK Government responded to hunger in schools by re-introducing free school meals for infants up to Year 2; this was announced in autumn 2013, and became effective from the term starting September 2014. Subsequent small scale studies however have found some children are still suffering from hunger in UK schools, with a few even complaining of "persistent hunger".
According to an April 2017 report by the All Party MP group on hunger, about three million UK children were at increased risk from hunger during holidays, where they no longer benefit from free meals, and other anti hunger measures available at school. A UNICEF report publicised in June 2017, found one in three UK children are in "multi-dimensional poverty", with one in five UK children suffering from food insecurity.
In April 2018, head teachers said children come into school malnourished and hungry. A head teacher said, "My children have grey skin, poor teeth, poor hair; they are thinner." Another head said, "Monday morning is the worst. There are a number of families that we target that we know are going to be coming into school hungry. By the time it's 9.30am they are tired." A Cardiff head teacher said children often brought just a slice of bread and margarine for lunch. All the heads said conditions were worsening as social and emotional support services were being closed. Over four fifths of heads said they saw evidence children were hungry, and roughly the same proportion said they saw children with evidence of poor health. Alison Garnham of the Child Poverty Action Group said, "With nine children in every classroom of 30 falling below the official poverty line, it is time to rebuild the safety net for struggling families."
Hunger can be an even more pressing problem for children during holidays. Children from low income families get free school meals during term time. During school holidays their parents cannot afford to feed them nutritious meals. After the long summer holiday these children return to school less healthy and less able to learn. This makes it harder for the children to get the type of education that could enable them to escape poverty as adults. In 2018, both the Child Poverty Action Group and the charity Feeding Britain estimated that three million UK children were at risk of going hungry during school holidays.
A May 2020 report suggested that the number of British children experiencing hunger had approximately doubled since the lockdown was imposed for the COVID-19 pandemic. In August 2020, for the first time in its history, UNICEF began funding charities working to feed British children, distributing over £700,000 to various UK NGOs.
In 2020, footballer Marcus Rashford become prominent among those working to alleviate child hunger in the UK. By July he had raised over £20 million for the charity FareShare. His campaign has twice led to government action to address child hunger. In November, this included causing the government to reverse a decision made in October not to extend access to free school meals during school holidays. Rashford committed to "fight for the rest of my life" to end child hunger in the UK.
Politicisation In the run up to the 2015 general election, the issue of hunger in the UK became politicised. While the increase in hunger appears to have begun while Labour was in power, church groups and left wing commentators began to criticise the coalition for aggravating hunger with austerity. Right wing commentators and politicians rebutted such arguments for misrepresenting the extent and causes of UK hunger.
For example, in December 2012, Trussell Trust chairman Chris Mould spoke out against the coalition's welfare reforms, accusing the UK government of lacking empathy for those faced with poverty and hunger. A Conservative councillor suggested in January 2013 that there was no starvation in the UK and no need for food banks, saying they enabled recipients to spend money on alcohol instead of budgeting for food, and were an insult to the billion people in the developing world who "go to bed hungry every day".
A spokeswoman for Trussell responded by suggesting that while low earners in the UK avoid starvation most of the time, they can face periods of severe hunger when hit by personal crisis, which for economically vulnerable people can be something as simple as a spell of cold weather, forcing them to choose between staying warm or going hungry.
However, the government countered that the proportion of benefits paid on time had risen from 88–89% under Labour, to 96–97% in 2014. OECD reported that people answering yes to the question "Have there been times in the past 12 months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?" decreased from 9.8% in 2007/2008 to 8.1% in 2011/2012, leading Toby Young to say that the rise was due to both more awareness of food banks, and the government allowing Jobcentres to refer people to food banks when they were hungry (the previous Labour government had not allowed this). In 2016, the All-Party MP group on hunger called for an end to political fighting over the issue, to avoid the risk of undermining public support.
History Pre-19th century