The time to announce how benefits would be uprated for next year is later this year in the normal way. The time for the following year is the end of next year. We reject the Bill, which is the Chancellor’s
partisan and unprecedented device to set out the trajectory for two years’ time, before we know anything about the future course of inflation.
Ministers still say that they are committed to eradicating child poverty. It says so in the coalition agreement. That commitment is clearly now fictitious. The Bill is simply incompatible with that commitment. Ministers should stop pretending. They have given up on reducing child poverty. They have not just given up on publishing the numbers as they used to do: they have given up on delivering the goal as well. Now they are implementing policies that will force child poverty up.