More than one fifth of the population lives in poverty. Is it any surprise so many feel politically homeless?

This week the Government’s Social Mobility Commission chair Alan Milburn resigned, frustrated by the lack of progress on making Britain a fairer country. Far from making progress, we know things are getting worse for hundreds of thousands of families across Britain.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s state of the nation report, UK Poverty 2017, finds that almost 400,000 more children and 300,000 more pensioners are now living in poverty than in 2012/13. Since that year there have been continued increases in poverty, across both age groups. No progress has been made on working-age adults, either.

Today, there are 14 million people living in poverty in the UK. That’s more than one fifth of the population struggling to make ends meet and build a decent, secure life.

Our report looks at the prospects and challenges facing this poorest fifth of households across the country.

What we find is that new threats are emerging as people try to build the foundations for that secure life.

First is in-work poverty. 8 million people live in families where at least one person is in work. Yet one in eight workers—that’s 3.7 million people—live in poverty. 40 per cent of working-age adults with no qualifications are in poverty, too—facing a barrier to work or better pay.

Second is the struggle to afford a home. Almost half on the lowest incomes (3.2 million working-age people) now spend more than a third of their income on housing. This situation is going to get worse, too. Falling homeownership means that in the future, more older people are likely to rent and have higher housing costs in retirement.

Third is the rising cost of living. Since 2003, people in the poorest fifth of the population have experienced a higher rate of inflation than the rest of the country in every year except 2010. Food and energy bills take up a larger share of incomes, leaving people on low incomes with little room for manoeuvre when prices rise.

And fourth, people are falling behind with bills and unable to put away for a secure retirement. 2.2 million of the poorest households have ‘problem debt’ and 70 per cent of people in work in the poorest fifth of the population are not contributing to a pension—around 2.3 million people.

The Budget offered little to ease the strain for people on low incomes. But we know there are things that can be done to put household finances on a firmer footing, if we choose to.

The most pressing priority is lifting the four-year freeze on working-age benefits and tax credits. The freeze is the single biggest policy driver behind rising poverty, hitting families in and out of work, and ending this should be prioritised over increases in the personal tax allowance to help low-income families, which do little to help the worst-off.

We could also invest in a more ambitious house-building programme that provides 80,000 new genuinely affordable homes to rent and buy every year that are in the reach of low income families, over cuts to stamp duty that benefit people who own or can already afford to buy.

And with people getting stuck in low-pay and working poverty, we could use the industrial strategy to drive up wages and productivity in the ‘everyday economy’, so people working in bars, hotels and warehouses feel the benefit from economic growth and see their prospects improve.

The squeeze on living standards now risks storing up problems for the future. We risk creating a ‘forgotten fifth’ in modern Britain—overlooked by politics and policy, while seeing their living standards rapidly deteriorate.

As we prepare to leave the EU, we have to make sure that our country and our economy works for everyone. We know people on low incomes feel politically homeless: almost a quarter say they do not support any political party. Perhaps this week’s troubling figures shows why.