UK: One in five people pushed into poverty by 'irresponsible and deliberate' political choices

In response to the release today of the UK’s latest poverty statistics, Jen Clark, Amnesty International UK’s Economic, Cultural and Social Rights Lead, said:

“Today’s figures are damning evidence of successive governments’ failure to ensure that every person in this country has the basics needed for a decent life.

“That more than 13 million people - including 4 million children - in one of the richest countries in the world have to choose between heating their homes and putting food on the table is unacceptable and the result of years of irresponsible and deliberate political choices.

“Although this Government has made some steps in the right direction, including scrapping the two-child limit, this does not go far enough.

“As world events trigger yet another layer to the cost of living crisis, the Government must act with greater urgency and ambition to make tackling poverty a priority. It is vital it reverses the trend of people being pushed deeper into poverty by overhauling the UK’s consciously cruel social security system, so it treats people with dignity and serves their human rights to food, housing and security.”

Poverty driven by policy

Amnesty UK’s 2025 examination of the UK’s  Social Security system, ‘Social Insecurity’, revealed a system that punishes, harms and dehumanises people through the processes that have been set up and actually perpetuates deprivation of living standards for those reliant on it. It subjects them to orchestrated stigma and the systematic erosion of their dignity and fails to meet the country’s international legal obligations. Successive UK governments have ignored UN pleas to take urgent action to fix the system and have knowingly made choices that make poverty worse, deliberately violating people’s basic human rights, moving the UK from a society that supports people to a punitive system that drives poverty by policy.

This latest set of Household Below Average Income figures are of people in absolute low income.