Poverty Costs Britain Billions – But the Real Price is Human

TAP to publish The Nicolson Report: The Poverty Scandal

London, 17 October 2025 – Poverty isn’t just a moral and social crisis – it’s an economic one. Yet the real cost goes far deeper than lost productivity or public spending. It ruins lives, crushes opportunity, and erodes hope.

Taxpayers Against Poverty (TAP) today announced the forthcoming publication of The Nicolson Report: The Poverty Scandal – an urgent new analysis linking the growth of extreme wealth to rising poverty and living costs, and setting out how Britain can fix the system through fair and modern taxation.

The report, named after TAP’s founder Reverend Paul Nicolson, challenges the government to recognise that inequality is not inevitable – it is the outcome of choices about who pays, and who benefits.

“Crucially, poverty is not just a social ill; it is also an economic deadweight. When a large segment of the population cannot participate fully in the economy – whether due to ill-health, lack of education, or inability to afford job search and training – the country’s productivity suffers. Research by the Trussell Trust and other experts quantifies this drag: hunger and hardship make it harder to find and sustain employment, costing the economy an estimated £38 billion per year in lost productivity and lower workforce participation (Big Issue).

At the same time, poverty increases public expenditure in reactive ways: the government must spend billions more on healthcare, social care, temporary housing, and other services to address the fallout from poverty. The NHS alone incurs an additional £29 billion annually due to poverty (The Guardian). People in the most deprived areas use emergency services at much higher rates – A&E attendance is nearly double, and emergency hospital admissions 68% higher, in the poorest communities compared with the most affluent (The Guardian).

Such statistics translate into enormous costs. One study finds that health problems attributable to malnutrition (a direct consequence of extreme poverty) cost the UK £22.6 billion per year.”

The Nicolson Report calls for bold reforms to make the system fairer and more efficient:

·       Tax wealth more and work less, ending the imbalance that punishes effort while protecting unearned income.

·       Reinvest the proceeds in public services – health, education, social care, and housing – that lift families out of poverty and strengthen the economy.

·       Measure national success by how well we reduce poverty and increase opportunity, not just by GDP growth.

Tom Burgess, CEO of TAP, said:

“The economic cost of poverty is staggering, but the human cost is far greater. Every statistic represents a life cut short, a child denied opportunity, or a family trapped in hardship. We can change this – but only if we have the courage to tax wealth fairly and reinvest in people.”

The Nicolson Report: The Poverty Scandal will be published in November 2025, ahead of the Autumn Budget.

ENDS

Media contact:Taxpayers Against Poverty📧 taxpayersagainstpoverty@gmail.com🌐 www.taxpayersagainstpoverty.org.uk

About Taxpayers Against PovertyTaxpayers against Poverty is a UK-based independent advocacy group dedicated to tackling poverty, inequality, and social injustice by promoting economic policies that have a direct effect on reducing poverty and the unnecessary financial hardship. TAP seeks to influence national and local policy with well-researched and robust evidence of hardship and promote practical policy proposals using a direct approach to decision makers and other influencers.

TAP was founded by the late Rev Paul Nicolson and is led by Tom Burgess, author of From Here to Prosperity, a new political agenda for a sustainable economy and greater social justice, which proposes taxing wealth more and income less. TAP’s sister organisation and partner is Compassion in Politics which seeks to bring more honesty, respect and compassion into political life

For media inquiries, interviews, or to support our campaigns, please contact:

Tom Burgess, CEO, Taxpayers Against Poverty  taxpayersagainstpoverty@gmail.com www.taxpayersagainstpoverty.org.uk  www.realagenda.org

Partner & sister organisation: www.compassioninpolitics.com