New Poverty

Today 13 million people are living in poverty in the UK. According to a2017 report, 1 in 5 children live below the poverty line. The new poor,however, are an even larger group than these official figures suggest.They are more often than not in work, living precariously and betrayedby austerity policies that make affordable good quality housing, goodhealth and secure employment increasingly unimaginable. In The New Poverty investigativejournalist Stephen Armstrong travels across Britain to tell the storiesof those who are most vulnerable. It is the story of an unreportedBritain, abandoned by politicians and betrayed by the retreat of thewelfare state. As benefit cuts continue and in-work poverty soars, heasks what long-term impact this will have on post-Brexit Britain and -on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the 1942 Beveridge report – what wecan do to stop the destruction of our welfare state.