Nearly seven million people in Britain are living on or below the breadline. In other words, they do not always have enough to eat. This astonishing figure comes from government statistics and a number of recent studies by social scientists. The resulting deprivation has been confirmed by the Community Development Projects set up all over the country in 1970. Millions of poor people are elderly, disabled or are children, but nowadays tens of thousands of them are full-time workers caught in the vicious circle of what's called 'the poverty trap.'

"Horizon" looks at attempts to overcome this trend: the improvement of housing by tenants' associations; the moving of factories into deprived areas to provide jobs; and, more recently, proposals for a 'reverse tax'. But none of these is seen to be the ultimate answer. The problem may lie deeper and, month by month, more and more of us are falling towards the new breadline.