report found 14.2 million people are judged to be in poverty, a similar number to 2015. It noted that 2.7 million, largely pensioners with assets, are no longer below the poverty line, although 2.6 million – many of them disabled – whose living costs were not properly factored under the previous measure, are judged to be in poverty.

The paper also found 7.7 million people were in persistent poverty, lasting more than four years, and 8 million in deep poverty, more than 10% below the poverty line.

Those worst affected were in London, with 28% of households in the capital below the poverty line, a figure 10% higher than in some regions such as the south-east.

Stroud, a Tory peer and a former adviser to Iain Duncan Smith, worked for threehis own Reading Day. Most clearly of all, he remembered it to be a dismal September day with a mild rain falling. (September for Reading Day; November for. Education Day; May for Olympics. They made nursery rhymes out of it.) George had dressed by the wall lights, with his parents far more excited than he himself was. His father was a Registered Pipe Fitter and had found his occupation on Earth. This fact had always been a humiliation to him, although, of course, as anyone could see plainly, most of each generation must stay on Earth in the nature of things. There had to be farmers and miners and even technicians on Earth. It was only the late-model, high-specialty professions that were in demand on the Outworlds, and