About 300,000 more children were plunged into absolute poverty in a single year at the height of the cost of living crisis amid soaring levels of hunger and food bank use, official figures show, prompting calls for an overhaul of the UK’s creaking welfare safety net.
Campaigners accused the government of failing to protect the UK’s poorest families as the latest poverty statistics showed 600,000 more people fell into absolute poverty – ministers’ preferred poverty measure – in 2022-23 when inflation was at its 10% peak.
