Figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) also revealed that a third of people cannot face unexpected expenses, while 23.7% cannot afford a one-week annual holiday.

However, persistent poverty rates in the UK in 2017 are comparable to levels in 2008, equivalent to roughly 4.7 million people, or 7.8% of the population.

Peter Briffett, co-founder and CEO of the income streaming app, Wagestream, which campaigns against payday poverty, said: “For nearly five million people in the UK to be living in persistent poverty is a damning indictment of the state we’re in.

“It’s the 21st Century and yet for far too many households life is borderline Dickensian.

“High inflation and negligible wage growth will have accentuated persistent poverty in recent years, although some will invariably point the finger at austerity measures.

“Hopefully strengthening wage growth and inflation returning to target will be helping more people out of persistent poverty.

On the second day of a judicial review at the high court brought by the campaign group Back to 60, many of whose members received little or no notice that their pension age had been changed, Sir James Eadie QC also argued that the group had no right to expect either notification of the changes or legal remedy to soften its impact.

“Parliament has no substantive, freestanding obligation of fairness,” Eadie told a courtroom so packed that many supporters of the action had to wait outside. “It’s clear from case law that the enactment of primary legislation carries with it no duty of fairness to the public.”

But Michael Mansfield QC, representing the protest group, argued that a “subclass – of women, not men – has been created by this discriminatory legislation.”

Citing the case of a woman known only as PS, who after a lifetime of working and never drawing benefits was now reduced to what she described as a “degrading and humiliating life” visiting food banks and subsisting on tinned food and biscuits, Mansfield said: “They have pushed women who were already disadvantaged into the lowest class you can imagine.

“They’re on the brink of survival, and I’m not overstating that. This group – especially the percentage of the group affected born in 1953 onwards – are increasingly having taken away from them four to six years’ worth of state pension. We’re dealing with very serious sums: £37,000 to £47,000. I think any citizen would be concerned by that withdrawal.”

Eadie said there was no onus on the government to advertise changes to primary legislation or to individually inform the 3.8 million women affected by any changes.

“There is precisely no obligation on parliament to notify those affected by its judgments,” he said. “Indeed, any such suggestion that a duty of that kind exists would be contrary to established principles. There is no basis in principle for the creation of any such duty.”