Around six million people live in homes where no one is working, according to new figures.

The statistics, from the Office for National Statistics, reveal that 4.3m adults and 1.77m children reside in welfare-dependent homes. The number of homes in which no one works has risen by 43,000 since 2003.

James Clappison, a Tory welfare reform spokesman, told the Daily Mail: “If nearly 1.8m children are growing up in households with no one in work, they are potentially being condemned to a cycle of low achievement and unemployment.”

Debbie Scott, chief executive at Tomorrow’s People, an independent charity that helps the long-term unemployed back into work, told Recruiter: “We are acutely aware that there are unacceptable numbers of households with people that have never worked. We need to work with the whole family in getting them back to work. We are about to commission a research project this to identify some strategies to look into this problem.”