We’re due to debate the creation of the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, with its remit expanded from that set out in the 2010 Child Poverty Act, in the welfare reform bill committee next week. With such a significant fall in poverty, the ConDems will have to change their line of attack. Expect them to return to that other old chestnut – that poverty’s not about money, and the root causes lie elsewhere. The so-called pathways into poverty identified five years ago by IDS’ Centre for Social Justice – debt, worklessness, addiction, benefit dependency and family breakdown – are set to return centre-stage. 

Of course, the government’s not wrong when it says that a strategy that’s solely based on income transfers cannot bring about a sustainable end to poverty. Labour never said that it could. That’s why, alongside a bold programme of redistribution, we introduced sure start, raised standards in schools, invested in a national childcare strategy that meant we went from one child in nine under the age of eight with access to a childcare place in 1997, to one in three by 2010, introduced the national minimum wage, brought together the social security and employment services in Jobcentre Plus and introduced the new deals to get many more people into employment, changed the law on the right to request flexible working to enable more parents to balance work and family responsibilities, as well as increasing child benefit and introducing tax credits to support parents with the cost of raising children, and make work pay for those in low-paid jobs. 

All that gets brushed aside by a government that’s determined to rubbish our record, to claim our policies didn’t work. Yet its own record is one of cynical disinvestment which will lead to devastating consequences and that’s something we must expose. 

Nowhere was this more clearly exemplified than in David Willetts’ plans to allow richer students to buy their way in to university places, proposed then swiftly withdrawn last week. It was breathtaking in its cheek. Here was a government that had once complained that Labour’s target to get 50 per cent of young people into higher education would ‘dumb down’ university, prepared to allow the less well qualified university access – provided they (or their parents) could afford to pay. Although Cameron quickly slapped down the policy, it was vintage Tory in its approach. Those who can pay can buy what they want, allowing a small amount of resources to trickle down to support a few promising individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds to benefit. 

It’s this individualising of success – a minority helped to transcend a disadvantaged environment, as opposed to tackling the structural causes of inequality – that characterises the Tory view. It’s their justification for targeting everything from EMA to free schools to sure start. And it isn’t good enough.

Child poverty will increase under the Tories – don’t take my word for it, that’s what the Institute for Fiscal Studies says. The prospects of the poorest will reduce. But I’ve no doubt some young people, some schools, some students from poorer backgrounds will do well, and the Tories will find the examples and performance metrics to claim that equates to success. It’s in that context that the proposal to create a social mobility and child poverty commission is designed to enable the government to move the goal posts, and Labour must face this down. Yes, poverty’s about more than just income inequality, yes opening up opportunity is important – but nothing the government’s doing will help more than a handful to progress.  Labour must insist that progress on tackling the structural causes of poverty, income inequality and economic injustice are the true judge of success.

Photo: Richard McKeever