As a first step, the motion called on the CSP to work with other key organisations and trades unions to lobby the government in a bid to persuade ministers to increase the number of families that can claim working tax credits.
Ms MacKenzie said working tax credits helped families who were ‘trying to pay their way’.
The motion, which was backed overwhelmingly by delegates with no one speaking against, also gives the CSP a wider remit to press the government to reduce poverty in the UK - on the grounds that the links between poverty and ill health have now been firmly established.
Ian Francis, speaking on behalf of Scottish stewards, said that working tax credits had received ‘three hammer blows’ during the past 18 months, the last of which is that people aged over 50 will shortly be barred from claiming them.
The government, which wants to cut the amount spent on working tax credits by £18m a year by 2015, was ‘obsessed’ with cutting welfare spending in order to reduce the national debt, he claimed.
Council member Catherine Pope, speaking in a personal capacity, said the ‘great scandal’ was that multi-national companies paid their workforces such low wages in the first place that tax payers had to subsidise their earnings with initiatives such as working tax credits.
Meanwhile, companies were introducing initiatives such as internships, which meant they did not have to pay wages at all, and making more people become self-employed, she added.
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