PM wades into poverty row with family outburst

David Cameron appeared to criticise people for having children before they could afford to care for them yesterday.

Appearing on ITV's This Morning programme, he spoke of constituents who came to him telling them they had waited until they had enough money to get married and buy a home. He then said that they, "see someone down the road do none of those responsible things and they get put up in a council house, they have as many children as they want".

Speaking of how he wanted to "change values" in the UK to ensure that hard-working families were rewarded, his comments on having children came only a day after the Archbishop of Canterbury attacked Mr Cameron's government for encouraging a, "quiet resurgence of the seductive language of 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor".

A spokesman for the Labour party said: "Today we have the Prime Minister lecturing people about whether they can afford to have children. The Government should concentrate on creating jobs and not cutting too far, too fast. It's creating a vicious circle in our economy which is hitting families."