‘Broken' financial markets are driving up food prices as inflation figures show UK consumers are now paying over seven per cent more for bread than a year ago, reveals a report released last week by the World Development Movement.

The report from the anti-poverty group shows how financial speculation on basic foods is driving spiralling prices around the world, which reached record levels earlier this year. The organisation claims the UK government risks condemning millions of the world's poorest people to hunger by failing to back European regulation to curb excessive speculation.

In the last six months of 2010 alone, rising food prices pushed 44 million more people worldwide into extreme poverty.

Financial players including banks like Goldman Sachs and Barclays have taken over food markets, says the World Development Movement's report, with the total assets of financial speculators in these markets nearly doubling from $65 billion to $126 billion in the last five years. Not a single penny of this has been invested in agriculture.