the Clutton Union Workhouse operated in accordance with the Poor Law.
Believe me, the 1834 Poor Law Act, which set out how workhouses and poor relief should be operated, was vicious. It separated families, gave inmates the very poorest diets they possibly could and set them to work on jobs like oakum picking and bone crushing. What is more, the overseers had no scruple in 'apprenticing' (effectively 'selling') orphaned children (and sometimes just children separated from their parents) from a very young age to factory owners where they were set to work for long hours in dangerous conditions.
I have no idea what period Rees Mogg studied for his degree, but I covered the 1834 Poor Law as part of my history degree. It wasn't good. When Dickens wrote Oliver Twist (1837) he was writing about conditions which obtained in the worst. He wasn't just an author, he was a reporter of contemporary social conditions with a view to reforming them.
How anyone could fail to be horrified by workhouses is beyond me; even if they were run 'in accordance with the law'.