Tories abolish #ChildPovertyUnit to hide the ONE target they’ve hit – and hugely EXCEEDED | The SKWAWKBOX
While Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn wants to abolish child poverty, the Tories have admitted that they intend to abolish the Child Poverty Unit – the civil service organisation intended to measure, understand and resolve the causes of child poverty.
Ironically, after a seemingly-unending run of missed targets on everything from economic performance to immigration to NHS waiting times, this decision comes as the Tories finally meet – and in fact, massively exceed – one.
Unfortunately, it’s one that no sane, feeling person would have wanted to see hit – but for the Tories it’s enough simply to sweep it under the carpet by abolishing the unit that monitored and fought it.
Almost 4 years ago, in January 2013, this blog covered the admission by then Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Esther McVey, that Tory attacks on benefits would push 200,000 more children into poverty.
But in fact, the same debate in the Commons extracted another admission from Mrs McVey – the fact that some 300,000 children in poverty are simply excluded from measurement. This figure is likely to be higher now, as the 300,000 then was a function of low wages – and real-terms wages in the UK are more than 10% lower now than they were then.
because of other impacts of Tory policy, further huge numbers of children are in poverty and unlikely to be measured – but even if those are not taken into account, the real number of children in poverty now in the UK is even higher than the published 3.9 million – at least 4.2 million.
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Is there no shame among their sordid ranks of lame brains.
Seems to me there should be many and constant Requests for Information about poverty figures.
Once again, I am left wondering just how much this Unit has cost the taxpayer and how much could have been just given to those who needed it.
Trying to hide the results of their inhumanity.