First, for the last 30 years, poverty in the UK has hovered close to the one-in-five mark, mostly a little below, but sometimes a little above, but a rate almost double the level of the 1970s and much higher than the average amongst other rich nations.
This has been driven by a sustained widening in the gap between top and bottom along with the erosion of life chances.
Yesterday on the pages of this blog, Stewart Lansley claimed that I had “hurled a hand grenade” into the poverty debate by urging Labour to rethink its approach to child poverty. Leaving aside the hyperbole of that statement, Lansley’s case seems to be that my intervention “chimes with the line being taken by the coalition” in its attempts to redefine child poverty and its causes. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Dropping the child poverty target would mean accepting a level of poverty much higher than almost all countries of comparable wealth.
Our guest writer is Nick Pearce, director of the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr) How should Labour respond to the spending review this week? The temptation will be to oppose the cuts without offering a clear alternative. But that wouldtest
