britain lived in poverty nearly 2000000 went hungry because their families struggle to buy food liam evans from the he says that the pandemic has only exacerbated the crisis. the government produced statistics saying $4300000.00 children are in poverty in the u.k. we actually believe that number to be higher we believe it's about $4500000.00 and that's about 33 percent of children in the u.k. so you know it's about a 3rd of a classroom. the fact that these numbers of before the pandemic is a huge concern you know this is child poverty before the pandemic was a 12 year high and you know it was high before the pandemic it's going to be even higher now and it's going to be irrevocably high in the future one thing that you see now that you would not have seen 10 years ago is the huge amount of food banks in 43 percent of people on universal credit the main benefit system in the u.k. of food insecurity we now have more food banks in the u.k. than we have branches of mcdonald's so you can really see the poverty in the u.k. at the moment it's visceral it's everywhere certainly creating more well