THE Conservative Party yesterday announced a “new, comprehensive way of addressing poverty” consistent with its “absolute priority” of eradicating child poverty.
The first step towards achieving this aim is to redefine the very notion of poverty itself.
Out goes the outdated nonsense of referring to those living on an income less than 60 per cent of the UK median.
The UK Government will instead concentrate on a bewildering range of factors which include educational attainment, parental unemployment, family breakdown, debt and drug and alcohol misuse.
The new rules have the distinct advantage of defying any possible useful measurement and will render comparisons with previous years utterly meaningless. But just in case this change doesn’t do the trick the Conservatives have ditched the legal pressure to eradicate child poverty by 2020. So even if it’s impossible to deny that poverty is rising rather than falling, it won’t matter anyway.
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith can argue until he is blue in the face that these changes are inspired by a passionate desire to help the country’s most vulnerable children but surely even he can’t believe that.
Those working on the front line of the fight against poverty certainly don’t. Yesterday’s announcement was greeted with a chorus of disapproval.
The Church of Scotland described them as “shocking”. The Children’s Society viewed them as a “national disgrace”. The SNP said it was “an absolutely disgraceful dereliction of responsibility”. The real reason these measures were introduced is glaringly obvious. The Government has not a hope in hell of meeting the 2020 target, particularly in the light of £12 billion of welfare cuts which it stubbornly refuses to detail.
The Scottish Government estimates there are currently 210,000 children living in poverty north of the Border. They expect that number to almost double as the Tory cuts bite. So much for eradicating child poverty.
The cynicism of yesterday’s announcement simply takes the breath away.
It is not difficult to see where they will take the argument next. But turning the focus on family circumstances, such as alcohol and drug addiction, it is already paving the way for laying the blame for poverty firmly at the feet of parents. We have seen this tactic before, when those in receipt of benefits are blamed for the position in which they find themselves.
We can expect to hear suggestions that the Scottish Government itself has not been doing enough to tackle poverty.
When this criticism comes it would be wise to remember that those levelling that accusation will almost certainly be among those who have worked tirelessly since the General Election to thwart the democratically expressed will of the Scottish electorate for more powers. Those powers look virtually certain to be denied by a political party with just one MP in Scotland.
We knew that the Conservative victory in the General Election would be bad news for Scotland and bad news for the rest of the UK. Just how bad is becoming more apparent with every passing day.
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