Jack Monroe

All my politics and campaigning has been around issues that affect women: violence against women, welfare cuts to women.

I eventually turned the fridge and freezer off - they were empty anyway - and the boiler, desperate to save money, shocking myself awake in the morning with the shortest, coldest showers, and boiling a kettle of water twice a week to bath my young son.

We need to aim to get rid of food banks altogether, and replace charitable intervention with a fairer, more equal society.

But it's a disgrace that food banks are needed in the first place, patching up the holes left by an inefficient and downright barbaric attack on the meagre safety net of what remains of a notion of 'social security'.

We hear time and again what a prosperous, affluent country Britain is, the sixth richest in the world. But aren't we ashamed that people who need emergency food handouts are eating cold beans and stewed steak from the tin, or handing it back, because they can't even heat it up?

There's all kinds of research that shows children operate best if they start the day with some proper food inside them - it's a no-brainer.