DOROTHY Fudge’s letter (Letters, January 7) on the responsibility for setting up food banks is based on the principle that if you state something often enough, no matter how untrue, people will believe it.

Any apology for the necessity of food banks should come from the city financial institutions, whose reckless behaviour caused the problem, not the Labour government. The same financial institutions who support the Tory party, who are quite delighted to reciprocate the favour by closing a blind eye to their blatant misuse of other people’s money, whilst pocketing millions in the process.

All governments, including this one, set their programmes on the information available from the financial institutions in regard to future prospect and market performance.

The present chancellor, Osborne, guaranteed when taking office to rectify the deficit by 2015. He has now amended that forecast to at least 2018, which makes him already 60 per cent wrong, with a miserly growth rate of about 1.5 per cent; yet he inherited a growth rate of 2.5 per cent.

Irrespective of when and how food banks were set up, the fact remains that under the present government their use has increased dramatically to about 300%. Nothing to do with overspending, or living beyond one’s means, more to do with lack of jobs, part-time employment and miserly wages. Even people in full-time employment on such poor wages they qualify for income support. That has to be wrong, it does not represent a ‘fair society’ and as long as there are people propounding the views of Dorothy Fudge, there never will be.

D R SMITH, Southampton.