The Government has made it clear that it is serious about its intention to cut £12 billion from the welfare budget, as part of its grand strategy of deficit reduction allied to tax cuts. When the figure was included in the Conservative Party’s pre-election policy proposals, it was widely assumed to be an opening position in the anticipated negotiations to form a new coalition government with the Liberal Democrats. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has estimated that £12 billion in cuts, aimed primarily at low-paid workers rather than the unemployed, would increase by 300,000 the number of children living in poverty as defined by the Child Poverty Act of 2010. The Government now proposes to repeal that act. It suffers from the obvious flaw that its definition of poverty is