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Twenty million people in the UK are living in poverty according to a study in which shocking levels of deprivation are highlighted.

The shameful situation is exposed in an explosive new book, Breadline Britain.

It reveals that poverty has doubled since 1983 – and is set to get worse over the next five years.

The study authors, economist Stewart Lansley and adademic Joanna Mack, carried out the largest ever survey of poverty in the UK.

Their findings paint a shocking picture of modern Britain. Thousands of face-to-face interviews reveal the desperate state in which many families live.

One in three Britons is below an internationally accepted minimum living standard devised by the authors.

Three and a half million adults go hungry so they can feed their children.

One in five children is in a house that is cold and damp. And one in ten lacks warm clothes.

Mr Lansley, who has campaigned against poverty throughout his life, told the Sunday People : “This study paints the most appalling picture of levels of deprivation across the country and of how generations are being denied opportunities.

“It is horrifying and appalling to me that we have a society that has built into its DNA growing levels of poverty.

“It is completely unjust and completely unnecessary.

“It is driven by a false political ideology.

“We are on the wrong road. We need a change in political direction, we need transformative politics of the type that we saw in post-war Britain.”

Breadline Britain shows that gas and electricity prices have doubled over the last decade. Meanwhile average wages have fallen over the same perod.

The knock-on effects mean 21% of people are living in debt and a third of people are unable to save any money at all.

The authors warn the situation is set to become worse as benefit cuts introduced in 2013 push more people into poverty.

Britons in debt 21% Percentage of Britons in debt Source: Breadline Britain by Stewart Lansley and Joanna Mack

Mr Lansley said: “You have a situation where levels of poverty will ­already be rising significantly and the picture can only get bleaker as people become more desperate.

“On current trends, the next five years will see more people in the UK in poverty, more often and for longer.

“Despite falling unemployment, the combination of an increasingly polarised labour market, rising housing costs and a continuing squeeze on benefits will put further pressure on low incomes.”

Lansley and Mack focus on case studies like Jody Palmer, whose story we detail below.

Her East London council house was so damp her daughter caught pneumonia – and even there she could not afford the rent.

The authors show how rising prices have hit the most vulnerable the hardest.

One extract says: “Low-income households spend a higher proportion of their income on basics.

“Price changes have hit them particularly hard, forcing more families to cut back on necessities, including, in a rising number of cases, on food or heating or, increasingly, both.”

According to Mack and Lansley’s ­research, more than half of those in poverty are in employment.

Of those, 39% are working full-time and 13% are in part-time employment.

Only 12% of people living in poverty are unemployed, while 11% are sick or disabled.

Mack and Lansley’s unique perspective on poverty in Britain has been built up since 1983.

With the help of the British public they devised a set of criteria that defined what was necessary to live above the breadline.

The working poor 52% Percentage of people living in poverty who are in work Source: Breadline Britain by Stewart Lansley and Joanna Mack

For adults the list includes two meals a day and accommodation in a warm, damp -free home.

For children the list includes three meals a day and a warm winter coat.

To be considered below the breadline, people must be unable to afford two items from the list.

They carried out a major survey to aimed at establishing how many people were living without the items considered necessary.

An ITV series produced by Mack highlighted the findings.

The first programme revealed appalling poverty in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain. The survey was updated and repeated in 1990, 1999 and again in 2012.

By 2012 the proportion of households lacking in three or more necessities stood at 30% – double the level of 14% found in 1983.

In 1990, the figure 20% and in 1999 it was 24%.

There has also been a rise in the level of deep deprivation, with 23% of adults lacking four or more necessities and 18% lacking five or more in 2012.

Again those figures are up from the 17% and 14% discovered in 1999.

The depressing picture is repeated for children.

Percentage of income paid in tax in 1979 Source: Breadline Britain by Stewart Lansley and Joanna Mack

According to the book, the only success story of the last thirty years is the falling rate of poverty for pensioners.

Just over 14% of all retired people today are poor, about half the overall poverty rate.

The authors argue that levels of poverty seen today can be traced back to the Thatcher government’s decision to cut the top rate of income tax from 83% to 40% during the 1980s and a subsequent rebalancing of the tax system towards taxes such as council tax and VAT.

In 1979, the top fifth paid 37.6% of their incomes in tax and the poorest fifth only 30.5%.

By 2011, this pattern had reversed, with the bottom paying 36.6%, more than all other groups, including the top fifth at 35.5%.

In addition, there has been an explosion in personal and corporate tax avoidance schemes. Independent experts estimate that such schemes cost the UK economy £25billion every year.

Mack and Lansley say the true figure is likely to be far higher, as up to a quarter of the world’s wealth is held in offshore accounts.

They say the Blair Government managed to reduce poverty in the UK via the benefits system. But it failed to reduce real inequality and close the gap between rich and poor by addressing taxation.

Percentage of total income paid in tax in 2011 Source: Breadline Britain by Stewart Lansley and Joanna Mack

The authors say Blair’s anti-poverty work was undone by the Coalition Government.

All they had to do was dismantle a benefits system made ­unpopular by the fact that the gap ­between middle-income families and low income families was relatively small.

Mack and Lansley argue that the gap between rich and poor needs to be closed, via a fairer tax system, better wages and working conditions.

The book states: “A system which condemns close to 30% of the population to live in deprivation carries clear social, political and economic risks.

Depending on charity to pick up the pieces is neither effective nor fair.

“Finding ways of building more equal societies is increasingly an economic and social imperative.

“Today’s huge imbalance, between people and profits, built around poverty wages and huge corporate and private surpluses, is unlikely to hold indefinitely.”

Breadline Britain is published by Oneworld Publications on February 19, price £29.99

'The poorest in Britain still living in squalor' says study co-author Joanna Mack

I was a TV producer at ­London Weekend Television in 1983. Unemployment was at a postwar high and we felt we needed a ­programme on poverty.

There wasn’t really a good measure that people understood so I started to define one using basic ­necessities such as a damp-free home, plus how people participate in society.

We found poverty levels were higher than we had expected. For many, life was a struggle every day.

When the programme Breadline Britain aired it really hit a chord. We ­received a huge number of letters thanking us for ­giving them a voice.

Later surveys in 1990 and 1999 found those problems were long-term.

But our latest findings really, really shocked us.

The levels of poverty were much higher than we could have anticipated.

We have a wealthier country but people still cannot afford to live.

Children are living in poorly heated, damp homes. We know this is likely to have a lifelong ­impact on their health and prospects.

It is wrong to condemn children to this kind of life.

Many living in poverty are trapped in low-paid, insecure work, desperate to change their circumstances, but it’s difficult to do this.

They are trapped by an unfair society that ­allows the rich to become richer and the poor to become poorer.

When I look back over the work we’ve carried out for the past 30 years, I feel angry that society has let levels of inequality spiral.

There is no reason for it to be this way.

We have a responsibility to protect the vulnerable and to make life fairer for all.