IDS challenges Tory thinking on poverty
The former leader of the Conservative Party has launched a new thinktank- the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ).
Iain Duncan Smith’s new project will be based in Lambeth in a deliberate attempt to distance its work from the political elitism of Westminster.
Following on from Mr Duncan Smith’s efforts whilst Conservative leader to focus on the plight of the disadvantaged, the new centre will concentrate on policies to alleviate poverty in the UK.
Mr Duncan Smith said that successive governments have neglected the problems of the inner cities and that the Conservatives should make them their first priority.
Speaking at the centre’s launch, he said: “The Conservative Party is at its best when it reaches beyond the safety of familiar constituencies.”
The presence of two of the Shadow Cabinets leading members, Oliver Letwin and David Willetts, on the advisory board seems to indicate that senior Conservative figures are looking at the centre with some interest.
Emphasising his belief in community based projects, Mr Duncan Smith said: “By trusting foot soldier poverty-fighters with more resources and more freedom, we must find new weapons for a war on poverty that has been badly directed by the generals of the left.”
“Pots of money are pumped into schemes that local communities don’t want but effective projects are starved of small sums of cash.
“What’s worse, the best, most inspirational charities tell me how they fear taking money from government because they fear takeover from Government.
“They fear being told what they can do and what they can’t do by the very same bureaucrats who created the problems they are now trying to solve.”
In a sideswipe at Labour’s record on tackling poverty, he said “serious welfare reform has been off New Labour’s agenda for a long time.”
“Although Labour’s targets culture has lifted many families from just below the poverty line to just above it, the deepest forms of poverty persist.”
“The CSJ’s ideas will be rooted in successful poverty-fighting charities that offer all of us a message of hope.
“A hopeful message about the kind of society we can build if we stop sinking more and more money into socialist models of welfare that haven’t worked and never will.”
Concluding Mr Duncan Smith challenged the Conservative Party to make sure that its policies “work for Britain’s poorest communities and every policy must be measured by that standard.”
