Scotland's first poverty adviser has attacked plans by the UK Government to redefine the definitions used to measure child poverty as "wicked".
Naomi Eisenstadt (CORR), a leading Oxford academic who was appointed by the Scottish Government last week, said any moves to try use measures such as debt and drink and drug addiction to assess poverty would be shifting responsibility from government to families.
The current definition of poverty is whether a child lives in a household which has an income less than 60% of the minimum wage.
But in his speech on opportunity last Monday, Prime Minister David Cameron said: "Today, because of the way it is measured, we are in the absurd situation where if we increase the state pension, child poverty actually goes up."
The Conservative manifesto also alluded to introducing better measures based on "root causes" of poverty - such as "entrenched worklessness, family breakdown, problem debt and drug and alcohol dependency."
However Eisenstadt said: "It is absolutely right that if you are poor you are at a higher risk of having a drink or a drug problem.
"On the other hand, there will be lots of people with lots of money who manage their drink problem, but they still have a problem. And there will be lots of people who are poor who don't have a drink problem.
"Another measure they were looking at introducing is family breakdown: your risk of being poor if your family breaks down is high.
"On the other hand, there are a lot of rich people whose families break up - like some members of the Royal family.
"These are indicators which have a judgemental nature to people's behaviour - that are saying if you are poor it is your own fault and if only you stay married and not take drugs everything would be okay.
"I don't think wicked is too strong a word, as it is just shifting responsibility from government to families - when of course it involves both."
Figures released last week show more than one in five children in Scotland are still living in poverty in Scotland, a figure branded "unacceptable" by social justice secretary Alex Neil.
A total of 210,000 children were living in relative poverty in 2013-14 - after housing costs had been paid - representing a decrease 10,000 on the previous year.
Eisenstadt said the figures were moving in the right direction and one of her tasks would be to scrutinise what policies were having an impact.
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