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Today the Mirror held a pop-up ‘Hope not Hunger’ foodbank outside Parliament with Unite the Union and the Trussell Trust – to highlight the fact that 120,000 families face going hungry this Christmas alone.

Labour MPs including leader Jeremy Corbyn dropped by throughout lunchtime, bringing gifts of food and donations. No Tory MPs attended.

Mr Corbyn said levels of UK poverty made him ashamed, while Emily Thornberry MP – fresh from asking the questions at PMQs – said it reminded her of the help given to her family when she was a child.

“When I was a kid, my mum was on benefits and we used to receive food parcels from our friends,” the Shadow Foreign Secretary said.

“They were an absolute godsend. My mum used to keep tins of Campbells meatballs under the stairs, and threaten us with them if we didn’t eat our food.

“Things now are actually worse than then. I have volunteered in my local foodbank and the stories are heartbreaking. The foodbank has become a symbol of Tory failure.”

Mr Corbyn said food poverty in the UK was an “absolute disgrace”.

“One million food parcels were given out last year by the Trussell Trust alone,” he said. “More and more of those were people working very hard but whose wages are so low they cannot make ends meet.”

(Image: Carl Fox)

Today, new figures from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation showed an estimated 3.8 million workers - one in eight - are now living in poverty. The study showed in-work poverty is up by 1.1 million since 2010-11, and 55% of those in poverty are in working families.

“It’s an absolute disgrace in modern Britain that people in work are forced to foodbanks,” Mr Corbyn added.

“We need a proper system of social security. I am constantly ashamed when I meet people sleeping on the street. It is simply wrong.

(Image: Carl Fox)

"There shouldn’t be foodbanks – but I would like to thank Unite, the Mirror and the Trussell Trust for everything they are doing to help.”

He added that he had donated to his local foodbank but they weren’t able to accept his homemade blackberry and apple jam. “Sadly, they don’t accept perishables,” he said.

MPs including Lisa Nandy, Debbie Abrahams, Angela Rayner, Tracy Brabin, Jo Stevens, Dawn Butler, Kate Osamor, Emma Lewell Buck, Ian Lavery, Ian Mearns, Wayne David, Liz McInnis, Rebecca Long Bailey, Rachel Maskell, and shadow chancellor John McDonnell all came to show their support.

They met Karen Debouza, who was driven to a London foodbank after being sanctioned for attending a hospital appointment instead of a meeting at the job centre.

“Last winter, I lived for five months without a single penny coming in,” she told me in a recent interview.

“I lodged an appeal, went to bed, turned off the heating, stopped eating and bathing, and tried to carry on existing while I awaited the decision. For five months.”

Gill Thompson, whose brother David Clapson died hungry after being sanctioned was also there to call for an end to the brutal benefit sanctions regime.

(Image: Mirrorpix)

MPs also met Nathan Jones, the manager of one of Westminster’s nearest foodbanks across the Thames at Waterloo. “Some days last Christmas we fed 90 people in two hours,” he said. “We are bracing ourselves for this Christmas.”

While some MPs drew attention to new in-work poverty figures out today, others made the link between benefit sanctions and hunger, and the failure of Universal Credit.

“For every 10 sanctions we see foodbank referals increase by five,” Debbie Abrahams MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said. “It’s an absolute indictment of this government’s policies.”

(Image: Mirrorpix)

“No person should have to choose between heating and eating this Christmas but without the support of local foodbanks up and down the country many thousands will,” said Unite general secretary Len McCluskey said.

“Holiday food is good, but foodbanks also need the basics that we take for granted like toilet rolls, toothpaste and toothbrushes, deodorant, shampoo, winter coats, gloves, scarves and Christmas presents for the kids.”