FAUX CONCERN FOR FAMILIES CAN’T CONCEAL IMPACT OF GOVERNMENT’S DAMAGING POLICIES

WHEN I heard the news yesterday I wasn’t sure if I was listening to an updated adaptation of George Orwell’s ‘1984’ for one of Radio 4’s ‘Book of the Week’ series.

I thought it must be Rory Bremner or Alistair McGowan doing a particularly good impression of the Prime Minister’s voice making a newspeak announcement.

He said: “Every single domestic policy that the Government comes up with will be examined for its impact on the family…For me, nothing matters more than family. It's at the centre of my life and the heart of my politics”.

I was astonished when I realised that it really was the Prime Minister and not a fictional spokesman from the Ministry of Truth.

I’m sure people won’t be hoodwinked by this faux concern when the average working family will be £2,073 a year worse off by the next General Election thanks to this Government’s tax and benefit changes.

Alarming new data shows that, in total, David Cameron’s government has taken £15bn in support away from children and families.

These figures are no surprise when you consider the policy prospectus Mr Cameron has put in place since his Tories joined forces with the Lib Dems to form a government in 2010.

There was the bedroom tax, which affected some 220,000 households across the country, impacting directly on as many as 375,000 children.

Cuts to maternity pay, tax credits and support for new families show that the average family with a new born baby is £2,000 worse off, according to the House of Commons Library.

Then there were the cuts to claimable childcare costs through the working tax credit, meaning some families lost £1,500 per year.

All this, at a time when childcare costs have risen five times faster than wages, and when there are 628 fewer Sure Start Children’s Centres offering some 35,000 fewer places.

Add into the mix the fact that the average family has seen their energy bill rise by more than £300 since the last General Election, and it’s easy to see why many have faced a tough few years.

In fact the £2,000-plus that the average family finds itself short-changed by, is likely to be just part of the story. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that any family which falls into two or more of the categories detailed above will find itself significantly worse off.

That is what’s so totally unfair about this Government’s counterproductive austerity programme. Millions have had their standard of living diminished by a Cabinet stuffed full of millionaires who have enhanced their own privileged circumstances through the policies this Government has pursued.

The only sense in which this Government has put families first is by placing them right at the front of the queue for cuts, somewhere up there with the NHS and other public services.

It is only when a Labour Government returns to power that those families who the Prime Minister feigns to care about so deeply, will feel any sense of respite; and it is a day which can’t come quickly enough.