I came across one brief moment in our history when the outlay approached adequate food: strangely, I read it in a Leeds workhouse’s accounts. Not gruel, but precisely weighed amounts of meat, bread, vegetables and beer per head were listed. There was also an entry with fuel for heating. But that was just after a parliamentary scandal concerning another workhouse where people had died of cold and starvation. It didn’t last long. Feeding people enough was too expensive for the parish, so workhouses closed, poor laws relaxed and a little “outdoor” money was dispensed to old, sick and unemployed people instead. Handing out too little benefit was, and still is, far cheaper than grappling with housing, feeding and heating people.