Duncan Smith says addict parents will waste cash on drink and drugs

In the Mail Online, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith is reported to have said that giving more benefits to poor families will not address child poverty because too many irresponsible parents will spend it on alcohol or drugs.

He said parental addiction – not family income – had emerged as the main factor in determining a child’s life chances, and insisted that the last government’s strategy of spending more than £170billion in additional welfare payments had failed comprehensively. Mr Duncan Smith said giving the family ‘an extra pound in benefits’ can even push them further into difficulty if the cash is used to fuel a parent’s dependency on alcohol or drugs.

To read the whole rant, see Why higher benefits won’t solve child poverty: Duncan Smith says addict parents will ‘waste cash on drink and drugs’

As Chris Goulden of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation points out on Twitter, Mr Duncan Smith’s grasp of basic mathematics appears somewhat faulty - <1% of adults in England are problem drug users; 15% of adults are in income poverty but why let the facts get in the way of a good bit of stereotyping eh?

Chris Goulden

Chris has also written a short piece on the issue as well.

The scales of the problems of poverty and addiction among parents are of different orders entirely. That’s not to deny any link between the two: clearly poverty is a risk factor here, but there is much more to poverty than just addiction. Most people in poverty are not addicted to heroin, crack or alcohol but are just struggling to make ends meet. Can’t we all agree on that?

There is much more to poverty than addiction to drugs and alcohol

(Solemn theme music)  Concerned sounding presenter—” Today we are looking at a new addiction sweeping the country, the PITS. PITS stands for Pointless IT Systems and an addiction to this is blighting the lives of many hundreds of people, many with responsible jobs. Addicts are prepared to take money from almost anyone in order to feed their addiction to shiny new terminals and expensive consultants. Today we are speaking to one addict, to preserve his privacy we will just call him Ian”

“Ian, when did your addiction start?”

“Well it sort of crept up on me, one day I was just carrying on as normal but then someone offered me a bit of PIT and I thought ‘wheres the harm in that’ The next thing I know I had got involved with a subculture where nothing mattered but PITS”

“When did you realise it had all got out of hand?”

“When I found myself involved in an out-of-control system to make others use PITS all the time-  people told me it wouldn’t work but I just had to keep on doing it- I couldn’t help myself. I spent millions of pounds of other people’s money and roped in all sorts of dodgy orgaizations and still I couldnt stop.”

” And what happened next?”

“Nothing really, because of my job I just got other people to pick up the tab.”

“Thank you Ian. And there you have it, a serious addition with no known cure”.

“Is it right that the public still gives money to addicts like Ian? Please call the programme with your opinion”

Thanks Pete, made me smile on a Friday afternoon :-)

Alison Garnham CPAG -

‘It’s right that the Government focuses on the damage that parental addiction can do to children, but a mistake to mix that up with poverty.’

Entirely of my own motion, I wish to propose that for ‘a mistake’ one should read read ‘fundamentally dishonest’.

As Max Keiser (RT channnel 85) pointed out, can’t remember IDS ever asking the banks how they lost billions of our money or what they plan to with the billions given to them. Couldn’t throw money at the banks fast enough.