By Rab Bruce’s Spider

The Tory Government has apparently been considering redefining child poverty because, for the first time in a decade, the latest figures were expected to show an increase in the number of children living in poverty. As things turned out, there wasn’t much movement in child poverty figures although why that should be grounds for satisfaction is a mystery seeing as it still leaves 2.3 million UK children officially living in conditions of poverty. It is also worth noting that the number of disabled people living in poverty is at its highest since 1998. However, since disabled people don’t really count for much, the official definition was not altered this time, although it remains likely that the Tories will quietly redefine poverty before next year’s figures are compiled.

You may wonder why they would do this and what the official definition is anyway, so here’s a short explanation.

The current definition of childhood poverty is whether the child lives in a household with an income less than 60% of the national average. This, according to the Tories, means that anomalies can arise during a period of economic difficulties. Indeed, David Cameron announced in a recent speech that:

"Just take the historic approach to tackling child poverty. Today, because of the way it is measured, we are in the absurd situation where if we increase the state pension, child poverty actually goes up."

Yes, Dave, that’s simple arithmetic. If you increase the income of any segment of the population which, by definition, does not include families with young children, the average income rises but the actual income for families does not. How revealing that a Tory Prime Minister should focus on pensioners, the group which provides his Party with so many votes, in a subtle attempt to persuade them that child poverty might somehow restrict a Government’s ability to increase their pensions. Call Me Dave is a clever political tactician and no doubt this specious argument will convince many people until they take the time to consider what he actually said. What he was doing was attempting to justify an alteration to the definition of poverty through the tried and tested method of scaring pensioners.

Of course, every politician needs to sound as if they are concerned about child poverty or, indeed, any poverty, and the Tories make a show of saying the right things while acting in ways which are completely at odds with their stated aim. This stems from an ideological misconception about poverty itself which is revealed by their own pre-Election manifesto in which they stated that they would:-

"work to eliminate child poverty and introduce better measures to drive real change in children’s lives, by recognising the root causes of poverty: entrenched worklessness, family breakdown, problem debt, and drug and alcohol dependency".

This statement shows their wilful ignorance because the things they describe are not the root causes of poverty, they are merely the symptoms. The root cause of poverty is a lack of opportunity for employment which pays a decent wage and it is here that the Tories’ own record shows their failure because the twin tactics of applying Benefit sanctions and promoting a low-wage economy based on Zero Hour Contracts will inevitably result in increased levels of poverty. They will attempt to hide this by redefining poverty and by hiding behind wider economic issues such as the Greek / EU crisis but there will be a very real human price paid by thousands of children whose lives could be blighted forever by this misguided economic policy.

and the worst aspect is that it will be another five years before the voters have a chance to show that they have seen through the spin and empty rhetoric.