Brown calls for benefits overhaul as study reveals how poorest struggle

Gordon Brown has urged Jeremy Hunt to act on startling research into Britain's threadbare benefits system that showed the poorest families must spend an average of 63p in each pound to meet basic food and energy needs.

- Patrick Butler

The former prime minister said the paper was a "wake-up call" to the chancellor that "reveals the arithmetic of poverty", and forces the UK to "face up to the fact that it is in the throes of a crisis".

The study highlights how a couple on benefits with two children must spend nearly 50% more of their income on food and energy than they did in 2012 when the figure was 46p.

This is due to the precipitous fall in the real-terms value of benefits. The equivalent spend by the average UK family is roughly 20p in each pound earned, the report says.

Brown said the chancellor should use his budget on 6 March to "implement a root and branch reform of the benefits system" to prevent the further impoverishment of Britain's poorest children.

On Thursday Hunt gave his heaviest hint yet that he plans a big tax giveaway at his next budget in the runup to this year's general election. He was speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, an annual meeting at a Swiss ski resort frequented by billionaires and politicians.