The call came as the charity said it could raise an additional £36,200 each year from its stores in Clydebank and Alexandria if every person who donated goods signed up to the Government tax scheme.

Gerard Cousins, director of trading at Barnardo’s, said: “If all those incredibly generous people who donate clothes and goods to Barnardo’s, simply signed up for Gift Aid, they could help us claim the missing tax millions and give tens of thousands of vulnerable children the help and support they desperately deserve.”