AT the Weaver Vale hustings, the issue of food banks was high on the agenda and rightly so.

In 2014/15 more than one million people in the UK and nearly 160,000 people in the north west had recourse to emergency food aid. In the north west this is up from 7,453 in 2011/12, which is a massive increase in just four years under David Cameron’s Tory government.

Having volunteered at one of the distribution centres for Mid Cheshire Food Bank at Bethel Evangelical Church in Northwich, I know all too well that people receiving emergency food aid are often struggling with in-work poverty in low-paid, insecure employment.

Only Labour is proposing a real and workable solution to reliance on emergency food aid by tackling the fundamental causes: low pay, by raising the minimum wage to at least £8 an hour before 2020, promoting a Living Wage, and ending zero-hour contracts so that working people can bring home enough to feed their families.

Food banks can never be allowed to become a permanent feature of British society.

Julia Tickridge Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Weaver Vale