How much do the Tories care about poverty?

The Tories' Social Justice Policy Group have made it ever so difficult to find their report 'Breakthrough Britain' on the internet for some reason. A press release on Conservatives.com claims to direct you to the website of the group. Except at the time of writing it leads to a typepad page dated August 14 2007 entitled 'Poverty debate' which has absolutely nothing else on it. No report and certainly no discussion.

It seems extraordinary to me that a flagship policy group report has no easily identifiable webpage where any member of the public can see exactly what the recommendations are. Maybe it's because the Conservatives know that their 'Back to Basics' recommendations of re-subsidising marriage simply takes money from the poor to give to the more wealthy? Perhaps it's because, no matter how much they deny it, one-parent families are ignored in Tory solutions to the problems caused by low incomes and family breakdown?  Or maybe it's because in the end, after all Cameron's hand-wringing visits to disadvantaged estates, the Tories just can't bring themselves to care that much about poverty?

Comments

[Graeme Kemp]

Of course the Tories don't really care about poverty - they will never embrace one of the the main solutions to it: redistribution of income!

It is more equal countries that tend to enjoy better physical and mental health. Where the gap between high and low incomes is narrower, people are generally more trusting and social-mobility is better. Denmark has better social-mobility than the USA. More egalitarian cities are friendlier than more unequal ones; Seattle is nicer than New York, apparently!

Proof of this is found in the extensive, international research of Richard Wilkinson of Nottingham University. He discovered that poverty and inequality lead to a worse quality of life, for everyone.

His research has been published in such books as 'The Impact of Inequality' and 'Unhealthy Socities: the Afflictions of Inequality'.

My guess is that the Conservatives' opportunistic fascination with poverty will fade when Cameron loses the next General Election.