Stephen Timms MP, Labour’s Acting Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, responding to the government’s announcement on Child Poverty, said:

“David Cameron’s government is trying to make child poverty go away by pretending that if you don’t measure it, it doesn’t exist. The Tory manifesto promised to ‘eliminate child poverty’. But now Tory ministers are trying to change the definition of child poverty to hide the government’s lack of progress.

“Ministers should be tackling low pay, boosting productivity and raising skill levels to cut child poverty, rather than threatening the tax credits that millions of working families rely on. It’s time for this government to make work pay, rather than making working families pay.”