Labour's Pat McFadden is charged with overseeing benefits reforms.

The number of people claiming benefits with no requirement to work has increased beyond 5m, new analysis has found, amid fresh calls for the government to tackle welfare reform in the near term.

Analysis by the Centre for Social Justice has estimated that the total number of people on Universal Credit and those on Employment and Support Allowance, an older form of out-of-work benefit, is nearly double pre-pandemic levels.

Researchers also said that last year saw the fastest annual rise in children with jobless parents on record, rising by 180,000 to 1.5 million.

It labelled the phenomenon the “root cause of poverty” and said the government should aim to reduce the number of workless households.

In some more alarming

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