The first step is that they are going to redefine the very notion of child poverty itself.

Out the window goes the well established and accepted notion that defines poverty as those living on an income of less than 60 per cent of the UK median.

They are now craftily muddying the waters by instead concentrating on a bewildering array of factors which include educational attainment, parental unemployment, debt and family alcohol and drug misuse.

This is a well crafted trick to defy any meaningful measurement and render comparisons with previous years absolutely meaningless and they have used backdoor methods of not having to meet their now empty promise of eradicating child poverty by 2020.

It’s predicted under the Tories that the no. of children in Scotland living in poverty will arise from 210,000 now to double that in five years as public spending cuts bite deeply.

I have to conclude that those misguided souls who voted Tory at the recent elections have no consciences and that in ten months time we should collectively give the Tories a bloody nose at the Holyrood elections and see the back locally of John Lamont and his motley crew forever.

I am, etc.

Nik Wirsten Leslie Place, Selkirk.