Tory peer says government has made a ‘political football’ out of poverty

Cost of living protest in Birmingham. The government must be more ambitious about improving the lives of those in poverty, says Philippa Stroud. Photograph: Mike Kemp/In Pictures/Getty Images

A Conservative peer and ex-adviser to former welfare secretary Iain Duncan Smith has accused the government of treating the UK’s poverty crisis as a “political football” and lacking the will and ambition to tackle soaring hardship and destitution.

Philippa Stroud, who this week launches an independent cross-party commission aimed at finding practical solutions to poverty, said the pandemic and the cost of living crisis had showed long-term policy change was needed to transform the lives of millions of people struggling on low incomes.