Almost a quarter of British people live on the edge of poverty: official report data.

According to a report by the British Commission on Social Indicators, nearly a third of children and a quarter of adults in the United Kingdom live below the poverty line, which represents record levels over the past one hundred years. The crisis, caused by the rising cost of living, has worsened the situation for 2.1 million British people since 2019.

Overall, 16 million people are experiencing poverty in the country, including 5.2 million children, 9.2 million working-age adults, and 1.5 million pensioners. Thus, every fourth resident of the United Kingdom is considered poor.

Children have proven to be particularly vulnerable. According to the report, in the 2022/23 academic year, more than a third of minors (36%) live in poverty, which is five percentage points higher than in the 2019/20 academic year.

The Commission defines poverty as the lack of material resources to meet current needs. The main indicator of poverty is how sufficiently a person has the resources to meet their immediate needs.

The United Kingdom has also imposed sanctions against ten individuals and legal entities from the Russian Federation involved in the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children. According to the British Foreign Office, about 19,500 Ukrainian children have been forcibly transferred or deported by the Russian authorities to the Russian Federation and to temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.