AROUND 218,000 households in this region receive tax credits, normally because someone’s pay is so low – of which around 85 per cent have children.

The Government tops up their puny income with up to £1,960 a year, with most required to work a certain number of hours to qualify.

You may think this is a consequence of Britain’s endemic crisis of low pay and a necessary helping hand for someone facing the cost of living alone, or looking after children.

It’s possible you know people who would still be on benefits but for the incentive of a tax credit – that the policy is, in the jargon, helping to “make work pay”.

But, apparently, all this is wrong – because claimants are, in fact, on a grim “merry-go-round” and suffer from that nasty disease called “welfare dependency”.

That is the view put forward by the Prime Minister this week, in perhaps the most shameless and dishonest speech I have heard from a politician since, well, Eric Pickles was sacked.

David Cameron, preparing the ground for a rumoured £5m of tax credit cuts in next month’s Budget, told us they stood in the way of “extending the drivers of opportunity” – whatever that means.

And he criticised “people working on the minimum wage having that money taxed by the Government and then the Government giving them that money back – and more - in welfare”.

Now, no-one believes tax credits are perfect. Many people fail to claim them, those that fail to report rising income end up with frightening repayments and they encourage part-time working.

And of course, in a perfect world, employers would pay people enough to live on, so taxpayers didn’t have to hand over this subsidy.

But, hey, the world isn’t perfect and it doesn’t take a genius to work out what will happen if tax credits are simply removed. The poor will get much poorer.

A recent inquiry, by the Resolution Foundation think-tank, found no evidence that these credits hold back wage rises – so pay will not, miraculously, soar without them.

And the Conservatives will not pressure companies to pay a ‘living wage’, because of fears it will cut the number of jobs.

So the policy is dishonest, because it will punish the low-income workers the Tories are meant to cherish – one option, returning payments to their 2003 value, would see 3.7m families lose £1,400 a year, on average.

A foretaste is likely in today’s updated poverty statistics, expected to show – disgracefully - soaring numbers living below the breadline, after earlier benefit and tax credit freezes.

But Mr Cameron’s speech was also shameless because, of course, he is happy to indulge the “merry-go-round” that sees state help diverted from the working poor to pensioners.

The retired used to be poorer than younger sections of society, but are now richer – a gap set to widen in the years to come, as pensioner welfare is protected.

Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, let the cat out of the bag when he accused Labour of using tax credits to “buy votes”.

Remember that few of the victims of this looming assault on tax credits voted Tory – while, back in May, a staggering 47 per cent of over-65s did just that.