Higher benefits for British poor families could do more harm than good, Iain Duncan Smith claimed last night, as feckless parents will only spend the extra money on themselves. In an attack on Labour’s child poverty targets, the Work and Pensions Secretary said youngsters’ lives were not necessarily improved by bigger handouts.
He claimed that any extra cash doled out to dysfunctional families may simply be frittered away on drugs and gambling rather than being used to improve the lives of children. Mr Duncan Smith's comments come after it was estimated that measures introduced by the Chancellor's Autumn Statement would push 100,000 more children into poverty.
