ALMOST 700,000 people have been plunged into poverty because of the economic fallout of the Covid-19 crisis, a report suggested today.

The Legatum Institute estimated that there are now 690,000 more people, including 120,000 children, living in poverty than at the beginning of the outbreak in Britain. 

It found that 270,000 of those newly in poverty are in deep poverty, when income falls 50 per cent below the poverty line.