One of the dangers of writing a bi-weekly blog is that others may have said what is on your mind before you have the chance to do so. Even so, the Government’s income tax policies cannot be condemned too often. How can the Government possibly justify increasing the rate of a tax on incomes it concedes are too small to live on? But this is just one symptom of an increasingly absurd government.

Government attempts to head-off a backbench rebellion on the abolition of the 10p tax band have revealed an astonishingly patronising attitude to those on low incomes. At first it promised to extend a previously announced inquiry into childhood poverty to cover childless households as well; in effect, holding an inquiry into poverty resulting from its own inept policies.

Now the Government is to compensate those who will lose out. Surely what people on low incomes want is to keep the money they have earned as a result of there own efforts. Instead, the Government is further adding to a machinery of the state that gives with one hand only to take with the other.

As Alistair Craig says below, the heart of the problem is the system of tax credits that Gordon Brown developed as Chancellor. Many MPs seem to spend the best part of their days helping their constituents negotiate the system. Yet, as the Conservative Charities spokesman, Greg Clark explained in an insightful contribution to the recent CPS conference on the post-bureaucratic age; tax credits mask poverty rather than curing it. As a result of the way credits work, many find themselves stuck on low wages and in need of permanent income support.  The Government has no answer because tax credits are central to Gordon Brown’s vision of Government.

Anybody who doubts that Labour has run out of ideas should take a look at John Denham, the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, recent speech announcing that universities may be financially penalised if their admissions system is found to be biased against applicants from less advantaged backgrounds. Not only could Denham produce no evidence that admissions are biased – in fact all of the research on the subject suggests that applications are treated with admirable fairness – he even admitted that ‘there is no evidence of widespread dissatisfaction with admissions.' Yet he is burdening universities with more regulation to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. The reason? Simply that Labour cannot face up to the failure of its own strategy. The proportion of admissions by students from the lowest three socio-economic groups has increased by just 1% since 1995. Labour has failed to help more working class people into University just as it has failed to solve the problems of poverty. We desperately need a new approach.