PoliticsChancellor George Osborneiain duncan smithuk poverty

10 Reasons Why Osborne And Duncan Smith Are Wrong On Child Poverty

Why Osborne And IDS Are Wrong On Child Poverty - In 10 Shocking Facts
Asa Bennett
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MANCHESTER, ENGLAND - OCTOBER 03: Iain Duncan Smith, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions delivers his speech to delegates at the Conservative Party Conference on October,3 2011 in Manchester, England. Chancellor George Osborne will today announce his plans at the party conference to extend a council tax freeze in England. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Image)
Jeff J Mitchell via Getty Images

Work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith has backed down on plans to redefine how child poverty is measured, after critics leapt up to warn that he was trying to "shift the goalposts".

A child is currently deemed to be living in "relative poverty"if part of a family that has less than 60% of median household income, but in plans first floated in 2012, Duncan Smith wanted to take into account other factors like whether members of the family are in work or how many of them are drug addicts or alcoholics.

To mark this climb-down on redefining how child poverty is measured, Duncan Smith wrote an article in the Guardian with George Osborne insisting that the government would tackle child poverty.

Despite scoffing at the "discredited" relative poverty measure used under Labour, they use the same measure to suggest that 300,000 children have left poverty since 2010 and suggest it would be replaced as part of their "long-term plan".

With the pair pushing a rosy message about the coalition's record on child poverty, here are 10 depressing facts on the state of child poverty in Britain.

Why Osborne and IDS are wrong on Child Poverty
Everyone else uses Labour's 'discredited' measure(01 of10)
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The OECD and the European Union are organisations that still use the relative poverty measure as it is still the standard international measure. As independent policy analyst Declan Gaffney explains: "It is hard to see why the measure should be suitable for other countries but not the UK."
IDS used to want "discredited" relative poverty tackled(02 of10)
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Iain Duncan Smith used to claim all forms of poverty, "absolute or relative", must be dealt with.In a foreword to a report from the Conservative Party Social Justice Policy Group in 2006, he wrote: "All forms of poverty – absolute and relative – must be dealt with."
People weren't lifted over "one side of an arbitrary line"(03 of10)
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Osborne and IDS insist that they are not happy with "measuring our achievement simply by how many children are moved from one side of an arbitrary line to the other."However, the Institute for Fiscal Studies' Matt Brewer concluded that the pair are wrong as "there was no cynical lifting of incomes from just below to just over an arbitrary line."He adds: "The beneficiaries from the government’s increases to tax credits or families were spread widely across the bottom half of the income distribution, and the income gains were anything but nugatory"
Cameron disagrees with Osborne and IDS (04 of10)
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Osborne and IDS both sniff at the "discredited" relative poverty measure, defined as 60% of median income, as used under Labour.Their cynicism contrasts with David Cameron, who warned that "poverty is relative – and those who pretend otherwise are wrong".
Most families hit by child poverty aren't workless (05 of10)
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Despite IDS and Osborne's promise to tackle child poverty in "workless" families, figures from the Department for Work and Pensions show that two-thirds (66%) of children growing up in poverty live in a family where at least one member works.Also 71% of children in poverty are in couple households, so poverty doesn't just hit children of single parents.
Child poverty still will increase under the coalition(06 of10)
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According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, 2.7 million children will be in relative poverty by the general election, with that number soaring yet higher to 3.2 million in 2020.
Even the 300,000 fall in child poverty is thanks to Labour...(07 of10)
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The data lag means that the initial 300,000 fall in child poverty from 2010 to 2012 would have been brought about by Labour's policies.Lindsay Judge from the Child Poverty Action Group explains that it is "primarily the result of policies they inherited – most notably the over-indexation of child tax credit – from which they have subsequently retreated".
The coalition will fail its target to get child poverty under control(08 of10)
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Unless the government repeals the Child Poverty Act 2010, the target of reducing child poverty to 10% remains on the statute book.And the government is on track to miss its legally binding target by a massive margin of 2 million.
You won't know they've failed to tackle it until 2016(09 of10)
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There is a data lag for child poverty, so the 400,000 projected increase in the number of children in poverty won't be shown in the data until 2016.
Child poverty is still worse here than in Slovenia (10 of10)
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In a Unicef study of children's material well-being, measuring how little money and essentials they have, the UK came below other advanced economies like France and Austria.
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