Patrick Wintour
The Guardian

© Photograph: Olivia Harris/REUTERS
The government says it is ‘investing in tackling the root causes of child poverty through making work pay’.

Government admits statistic that Labour says shows children are victims of Tory ‘games’ and ‘economic failure’.

The squeeze on tax credits and benefits will push a further 200,000 children into poverty, the government has admitted for the first time. It suggests a total of a million extra children will be in poverty as a result of government welfare measures.

Ministers have said they no longer regard the relative child poverty statistics as a useful or valid measure.

The extra 200,000 children in poverty figure stems from the government’s decision to lift most in-work and out-of-work benefits by only 1% over the next three years instead of increasing them in line with inflation.

Ministers had been reluctant to state what the impact would be on child poverty, an official government measure that looks at the number of households with incomes at 60% or below the national average household income.

But in an answer to a parliamentary question, work and pensions minister Esther McVey estimated that “the uprating measures in 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16 will result in around an extra 200,000 children being deemed by this measure to be in relative income poverty compared to uprating benefits by CPI [consumer price index]”.

Ministers are trying to push through the benefit squeeze with just one day of debate for the committee stage and third reading of the welfare benefits uprating bill in the House of Commons next Monday.

Labour said the figures showed children were victims of Tory “political games”. Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, said: “The true character of this Conservative-led government has now been exposed. While they give the richest 2% of earners a £3bn tax cut, 200,000 children will be pushed into poverty and millions of working families made worse off.

 

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