Rishi Sunak’s PMQs poverty claim refers to absolute, not relative, poverty

22 November 2023

At Prime Minister’s Questions just now, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said “1.7 million fewer people are living in poverty”.

This is correct based on one measure of poverty, but others offer a different picture.

Mr Sunak’s figure appears to be 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. 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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