Largely because we had a functioning welfare state from the post war period until roughly 2010 when the coalition government came in, although it was getting th

Largely because we had a functioning welfare state from the post war period until roughly 2010 when the coalition government came in, although it was getting threadbare already. This welfare system had, to some degree at least, cross party support for a variety of reasons bith moral and economic. The coalition government pursued a deliberate policy of emiseration of benefit recipients largely for electoral reasons, using the financial crisis of 2008 as an excuse, including cutting child benefit for third children and penalising people for having spare bedrooms. Combined with stagnant wage growth and increaaing rents this pushed large numbers of people into absolute, not enough to eat, poverty, including many workers. Foodbanks, which had previously been almost unknown and largely used by people with no recourse to public funds sprang up in an attempt to to fill this gap. As well as the Trussel trust and other food banks that take referrals and are counted in those statistics there are countless small ones run out of chruches, mosques and community centres that don't appear in these figures as they operate on a less formal basis providing food to all comers.