More than 1,300 children in working families 'fall into poverty every week'

A “toxic combination” of stagnating pay, zero-hour contracts and benefit cuts are having “a devastating impact on family budgets”, said the union body’s general secretary Paul Nowak.

Since the Conservative Party came to power in 2010, initially in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, the number of children living in poverty where at least one parent is in work has risen by 913,000.

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As of last year, there were three million children in working households “living below the breadline in the UK”, warns the TUC, which has used official household income figures as its source. 

Seven in 10 of all children in poverty are in working households. One in four children in working households are in poverty, it adds.  

“No child in Britain should be growing up below the breadline," added Nowak.

“But under the Conservatives we have seen a huge in rise in working families being pushed into poverty. 

“We urgently need an economic reset and a government that will make work pay. Reducing child poverty must be a priority in the years ahead.” 

Further research by the TUC has found that there are now 4.1mn people in insecure, low-paid work.

Real wages are worth less than in 2008 and if they had grown at the level before the Conservatives took power the average worker would be more than £14,000 a year better off, it’s research also found.

A Downing Street based poverty unit should be set up by the next government, according to former Children’s commissioner for England Anne Longfield’s think tank The Centre for Young Lives.

She also recommends the two-child benefit cap is scrapped, free meals are extended to all children in families receiving universal credit and Pupil Premium funding should be available to 16-18-year-olds.

Youth sector leaders have also been calling for the next government to prioritise tackling child poverty, at a panel discussion event at Sounddelivery Media’s Festival of Learning this week.

Meanwhile, more than a third of primary school pupils have come to school hungry at some point this year, found a survey of teachers published by Joseph Rowntree Foundation earlier this month