Faith-based organisation, the Trussell Trust, brings faith into the public square with this article

An interesting article in today’s Guardian – one likely to provoke strong opinions. The Chief Executive, Emma Revie, says ‘“We do not want to be a part of the welfare state, we can’t be a part of the system.”

What are your views? Agree or disagree? What role do you think people of faith and faith based organisations should play in looking after the ‘widows and orphans’ in society? We’d love to know.

A record 1.6m emergency food parcels were given out by the Trussell Trust food bank network last year – more than 500,000 of them to children – as benefit cuts, universal credit delays, and rising poverty fuelled the busiest year in the charity’s history.

The trust demanded urgent changes to the UK benefit system – including major reforms to universal credit – as it recorded a year-on-year 19% surge in the number of food bags it gave out, the biggest annual increase for five years.

Pointing to data showing that its emergency food supplies had grown for five consecutive years – a 73% increase overall – the charity warned that food banks could not keep expanding indefinitely to cover for a failing social security system.

The Trussell Trust’s chief executive, Emma Revie, said it was unacceptable that people had to use food banks in the first place, and the state should not rely on them to fix its shortcomings. “We do not want to be a part of the welfare state, we can’t be a part of the system.”

To read the full article, please click here