Rishi Sunak’s claim about government’s record on poverty: fact checked

29 November 2023

For the second week in a row during Prime Minister’s Questions, the PM Rishi Sunak said “1.7 million fewer people are living in poverty today than in 2010”.

As we’ve previously explained, this is correct based on one measure of poverty, but others offer a different picture.

Mr Sunak’s figure is based on the number of people in absolute poverty after housing costs, which has fallen by 1.7 million since 2009/10 according to the latest DWP figures published in March. Looking at another measure, the number in relative poverty after housing costs, however, is up by 900,000 over the same period.

We wrote more about the different ways of measuring poverty in this fact check about a different claim back in June.

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