Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the world’s richest person, has donated $100m (£80m) to food bank charity Feeding America. The charity, which runs a network of about 200 food banks, said Bezos’s donation was the biggest it had ever received, and “countless lives will be changed because of his generosity”.

However, critics pointed out that the $100m donation made public by Bezos represents less than 0.1% of his estimated $123bn fortune.

Amazon is also pumping $25m into an “Amazon Relief Fund” to support delivery drivers and “seasonal employees under financial distress”.

Fran Perrin, a daughter of supermarket heir and philanthropist Lord Sainsbury, said now was the time for billionaires such as Bezos to start “giving back to society in the biggest way possible”.

“Why wouldn’t you want to give more,” Perrin said of other very wealthy people. “I think people in a position to be able to, should give as much as they can. I think that’s perfectly reasonable.”