Christian leaders have blamed the UK’s foodbank ‘crisis’ on government welfare reforms and benefits cutbacks.

In a strongly worded letter to the prime minister, 27 Anglican bishops and 16 other clergy accused Cameron of forcing people to go hungry and leave their homes unheated.

Yesterday Cameron said welfare reforms were giving ‘new hope’ to the nation, emphasising that while the Coalition Government had made the ‘difficult decision that benefits should not go up faster than wages,’ the ‘safety net’ remained in place.

In response, Britain’s leading bishops wrote: ‘We often hear talk of hard choices. Surely few can be harder than that faced by the tens of thousands of older people who must “heat or eat” each winter, harder than those faced by families whose wages have stayed flat while food prices have gone up 30% in just five years.’

‘Yet beyond even this we must, as a society, face up to the fact that over half of people using foodbanks have been put in that situation by cut backs to and failures in the benefit system, whether it be payment delays or punitive sanctions,’ the letter - published in the Daily Mirror - reads.

Half a million people have visited foodbanks in the UK since Easter, while one in five mothers report regularly skipping meals to better feed their children.

Faith leaders said Cameron had a duty to ensure the welfare system was offering robust support against hunger.

‘There is an acute moral imperative to act. Hundreds of thousands of people are doing so already, as they set up and support foodbanks across the UK. But this is a national crisis, and one we must rise to’, the intervention warned

Their calls come after the archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, branded Government welfare cuts a ‘disgrace’.

Responding to the letter, Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary, Rachel Reeves, said: This letter should be a wake-up call to David Cameron. His government’s policies are making life harder for families with a cost-of-living crisis making workers £1,600 worse off and the “bedroom tax” forcing hundreds of thousands to food banks.

‘This Tory-led Government’s welfare reforms have penalised, rather than helped, those doing the right thing.’