Will Government policy increase poverty?

YES...

Cllr Ed Turner, deputy leader of Oxford City Council

So it’s official. In a hard-hitting report, the National Institute of Social and Economic Research concluded earlier this month that Government policies are likely to lead to a “further rise in income inequality”, and child poverty will go up.

This should come as no surprise. The Government has cut funding for Sure Start, abolished the Educational Maintenance Allowance which encouraged young people to stay on in education, even in the face of clear evidence this would hit young people from less well-off backgrounds very hard, and proposed a range of savage benefit cuts – hammering the disabled, cancer sufferers, long-term unemployed and those in low-paid work.

In Oxford, housing benefit cuts will have a huge and disruptive impact, with one former Lib Dem councillor here warning that “The result of the current coalition policies will be more over-crowding, more misery, and more people sleeping on our streets”.

No doubt supporters of the Government will offer some waffle by way of justification. They may try to redefine poverty or inequality, talk about “raising aspiration” or point to the “Big Society”, which in reality is a smokescreen for cuts.

But what is needed is a change of course. There should be an immediate reduction in VAT, the Treasury should immediately bin the idea of cutting income tax for those earning more than £150,000 a year and the Government should stop blocking a financial transaction tax at a European level. As the National Institute’s report shows, we really aren’t all “in it together” – those least able to afford cuts in society are bearing the biggest burden.

NO...

Cllr Mark Mills, deputy leader of the city council's Lib Dem group

Councillor Turner and I agree about this much: poverty is rising and will rise further.

If, however, he believes this is because of the Coalition Government then I suggest he turns to the international pages of his newspaper, where he will see that hardship is on the rise across the developed world.

When economies are struggling and welfare states shrinking under governments as diverse as those led by Obama, Sarkozy and Zapatero, it is clear that changing our own Government would not spare us our current predicament.

We should be sceptical that where Obama has failed, Milliband would succeed. Before the last general election, the then Labour chancellor, Alastair Darling, said if re-elected his party would have to make cuts “tougher and deeper” than those implemented by Thatcher.

The UK Government is borrowing one pound in every four it spends and the size of our public deficit is larger relative to our economy than Greece’s. There is no painless way to tackle borrowing on this scale and if Labour has discovered one, they are not sharing it with the rest of us.

Instead they oppose virtually every cut, while neglecting to explain how they would reverse more than a fraction of them.

This failure to provide an alternative is an admission that whoever was in Government, economic winds would be taking us somewhere ugly.