HOW many MPs who voted to slash benefits for single parents, disabled people and the working poor felt guilty as they ambled past the Hope not Hunger pop-up foodbank outside Parliament?

How many experienced no shame when flipping first and second homes to maximise taxpayer-funded expenses but voted to squeeze the poorest to safeguard public funds?

Tory MPs have veered from denigrating foodbanks as emblematic of a “something for nothing” society to portraying them as an essential part of the welfare system.

In reality, foodbanks are a constant reminder of welfare system failings.

We are constantly reminded that Britain has the sixth-biggest economy in the world, but 130,000 people will depend for food on Trussell Trust foodbanks this Christmas.

Crisis charities have for years sought to feed the homeless during the annual festive period, but this is now a yearlong problem that increasingly affects the working poor.

Research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation establishes that the percentage of people living in poverty in Britain has doubled in a decade to 21 per cent of the population.

Moreover, a record high of 55 per cent of people living in poverty come from working households, which demonstrates, as Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary Debbie Abrahams says, “the true impact of six wasted years of Tory austerity.”

Private rented housing, gas and electricity are key to the spectacular rise in the phenomenon of the working poor because their costs have rocketed while pay at the lower levels has stagnated.

The government has exacerbated the situation by taking an axe to benefits relied upon by low-income working families, repeating its mantra that it cuts benefits to persuade people to find work.

People, especially those in work, should not have to rely on foodbanks to survive.

An alternative approach that raises the lowest wage rates, makes low-rent council housing available and defends benefit levels is essential to end the scourge of poverty.