Was food poverty actually higher under the last Labour government?

I’m looking forward to tonight’s Spectator debate in which Fraser Nelson, William Cash and I will be taking on Owen Jones, Jack Monroe and Molly Scott Cato MEP over the issue of whether the rich should pay more in tax.

One thing I’m sure Owen and his colleagues will do is point to figures released today from Trussell Trust food banks that seem to show that over a million people are now using their facilities. In fact, this figure is misleading, as Full Fact has pointed out:

‘The claim that over a million people are using Trussell Trust food banks is inaccurate. It comes from confusing the number of different people using Trussell Trust food banks in a year with the number of times they use the food banks. The Trussell Trust collect their data from the vouchers used by people referred to their food banks. If one voucher feeds a family of 4 people, that’s 4 instances. If the same family visit again next week, that’s another 4 instances.