by Felicity Collier

LIVING standards in Britain are at their worst since the days of Margaret Thatcher, a leading think tank warned yesterday.

The Resolution Foundation predicts that poorer households with children are suffering the most and will see “almost no income growth” before 2020.

On average, household income growth looks set to fall to 1.2 per cent this year.

The findings reveal that the current government is the worst for low and middle households since the 1960s, when comparable records began.

“Very significant cuts” of over £12 billion to working-age benefits were blamed for lower earners’ falling living standards.

The charity noted that at the other end of the spectrum, the government is introducing tax cuts which will predominantly benefit middle to higher-income households.

Resolution Foundation director Torsten Bell said: “This could leave Britain with the worst of both worlds on living standards — the weak income growth of the last parliament, and rising inequality from the time Margaret Thatcher was in Downing Street.”

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said: “This report is damning of the unfair economic policies of this Chancellor, with the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer.”

Almost six million workers in Britain don’t earn enough to cover their basic costs, according to The Living Wage Foundation.

In separate research from debt charity StepChange yesterday nearly a third of workers were found to have had no spare cash for emergency bills in the past year.

The charity said many households are living in a “perilous financial state,” as a fifth said they would be unable to get by for more than a month if their income fell by a quarter.