The recent cost-of-living crisis and fall in living standards has been unprecedented in living memory. While the rate of inflation may have fallen, families are still struggling to pick up the pieces from the past two years as prices continue to tick upwards.

Global economic shocks, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, are the main cause of rapidly rising prices around the world – including in the UK. But people are also paying higher prices here because of unfair industry practices, or to compensate for market problems they did not cause. The ‘poverty premium’ is perhaps the most egregious example: millions are forced to pay higher prices, and sometimes go without as a result, because they have a low income.

This report analyses the impact of the poverty premium and unfair industry practices in the markets for essential goods and services such as energy, water, financial services, broadband, and food; sets out why markets, regulators and the government have failed low-income households; and makes recommendations to tackle the poverty premium and make markets work for low-income families.

To analyse the impact of the poverty premium and unfair industry practices, and to develop recommendations to tackle it, the author undertook a literature review, a series of in-depth expert interviews, a roundtable with key stakeholders, and analysis of the poverty premium data at constituency level.