THE number of children living in poverty in working households has risen by 1,350 a week since 2010, when the Tories took power in coalition with their Liberal Democrat collaborators, the TUC said today.

A “toxic combination” of pay stagnation, a growth in insecure work and cuts to social security benefits have forced an additional 900,000 children into official poverty, despite their families having at least one working member.

A campaigning children’s charity said the creation of such poverty was a “political choice” by the government and called on the next administration to make the political choice to end it.