Welfare changes will increase poverty, says IFS

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

A report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) says that both Child and working age poverty are set to rise in the next three years due to the government’s tax and benefit reforms. The report predicts a rise in absolute poverty of 900,000 people by the end of 2014, and an increasive in relative poverty of 800,000.The IFS said that their finds were “at odds with the government’s claim in the 2010 spending review that its reforms will have no measurable impact on child poverty in 2012-13.”

Responding to the news on Channel Four News this evening, shadow work and pensions secretary Douglas Alexander said:

“The report builds in assumptions in relation to Housing Benefit which were frankly ignored by George Osborne and David Cameron when they claimed they wouldn’t have any impact at all on Child Benefit and child poverty in particular.”

“[Osborne] has turned many of the most vulnerable people in British society into chess pieces in his grand political game. That’s wrong and this evidence shows that many of the country’s poorest families will actually be paying a heavy price.”