THE Conservatives made an auda-cious bid to be the party of the poor yesterday as the Government was forced to say “sorry” for the 10p tax rate debacle.
David Cameron, the Tory leader, exploited Gordon Brown’s turmoil over the tax changes that have hit millions of low-paid workers by branding the prime minister’s drive to cut poverty “a great failure”.
Mr Cameron accused Mr Brown of trying to “bury bad news” by delaying the latest child poverty figures until after Thursday’s local elections, amid rumours they will reveal a second success-ive rise.
And, releasing a dossier of Tory plans, entitled ‘Making British Poverty History’, the Tory leader said: “We can end poverty. I mean it. Together, we can do it.”
The attempt to steal Labour’s anti-poverty clothes came as MPs debated the hastily put-together package to compensate up to 5.3m people penalised by the 10p rate abolition.
Some Labour MPs still demand answers to confusion about how many of the losers will get their money back, after Mr Brown’s handbrake U-turn last week.
The row also dogged Labour on the campaign trail. Appearing in the North-West, the prime minister was asked if he was “sorry” the changes had been botched.
Mr Brown replied: “Of course, because it’s unfortunate when things go wrong for people and we’ve tried to sort that out immediately over the last few days.”
And, in a radio interview, Justice Secretary Jack Straw told one caller who had lost money: “I am sorry that you have been placed in this position and it shouldn’t have happened.”
Meanwhile, a poll for yesterday’s Independent newspaper piled pressure on Mr Brown, finding the Tories had doubled their lead over Labour in one month.
It put the Conservatives on 40%, 14 points ahead of Labour on 26%.
Unveiling his poverty plan, Mr Cameron said there were 600,000 more people in severe hardship than in 1997, as he claimed Mr Brown had “totally failed to tackle the root causes of poverty”.
The Tory leader added: “This was the Government that promised an equal society. But the poorest people in our country have got poorer.
“This was the Government that said it stood for fairness. But the gap in life expectancy between the richest and poorest in our country is now greater than at any time since Queen Victoria’s reign.”
The Government poured scorn on Mr Cameron’s speech, pointing out that child poverty doubled when the Tories were in power to give Britain the worst record in Europe.
And the Tories were also accused of an empty pledge by campaign groups, who highlighted the party’s failure to make a firm commitment to Labour’s 2020 target to eliminate child poverty.
The Child Poverty Action Group said: “It’s time for Cameron to prove he has faith in his party’s proposals and turn the ‘aspiration’ to end child poverty into a promise.”
And Martin Narey, the chief executive of Barnardo’s, said: “The Tories’ aspiration to end child poverty seems to owe more to clever drafting than determination.”
Official figures show that 600,000 children have been lifted out of poverty since Labour came to power, although the total rose by 100,000 in last year’s figures.
As a result, Labour has all but abandoned its pledge to halve child poverty by 2010, although it insists it re- mains committed to abolish- ing it altogether by 2020.
