Child poverty: has Scotland lost its bottle?
“How can Scotland achieve its potential when 20 per cent of the population can’t achieve theirs?” This is how former first minister Henry McLeish opened Holyrood’s event on tackling child poverty in Scotland.
The topic is high on the political agenda, of course, with the proposed Child Poverty (Scotland) Bill articulating the Scottish Government’s ambition to eradicate child poverty by 2030.
John Dickie, who leads the Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland, revealed just how ambitious that aim is, with current statistics showing one in five children in Scotland living in poverty, two-thirds of them in working households.
Expected to form part of the bill will be targets based on income, similar to the ones set out in 2010 UK legislation but subsequently repealed by the Conservative government.
Those targets include fewer than 10 per cent of children in Scotland in relative poverty by 2030, and fewer than five per cent in absolute poverty, which uses a set base regardless of whether other higher incomes go up.
The Scottish Government’s independent poverty adviser, Naomi Eisenstadt, reappointed as the consultation for the new legislation was launched, told delegates the targets were useful.
“I know there are sceptics, but I have to say I think it’s really good to have targets because now you can measure them. It holds government’s feet to the fire,” she said.
More important than arguments about long-term savings and preventative spend when making a case for tackling child poverty is social justice, Eisenstadt argued.
But what can governments do? They can prioritise reducing poverty, reducing inequality or ameliorating the impact of poverty on poor children, and each requires different policy responses, according to Eisenstadt.
“You can reduce child poverty by increasing family incomes, and I have to say the Labour government until 2010 was very good at that. But they did nothing about inequality, in that the top went up faster,” she said.
Tackling inequality is harder than tackling poverty alone, she warned, because there would be “winners and losers”.
But when families are in perpetual crisis situations long-term planning becomes unrealistic because “the urgent replaces the important”, she said.
This is evident when it comes to choices on diet, research has shown. Eisenstadt challenged the assumption that poor parents feed their children cheap food because they don’t know any better.
Can government reduce that stress?
But does Scotland have the will to take on the issue?
Professor John McKendrick of Glasgow Caledonian University said the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey revealed the vast majority of Scots recognise child poverty and think it should be tackled. But they also believe the main factor is alcohol or drug abuse.
“Legislation alone is not enough to tackle child poverty,” he suggested, it will need buy-in from business and communities of interest.
Delegates heard how Renfrewshire Council and Queens Cross Housing Association in Glasgow had allowed change to be led by people experiencing poverty.
Renfrewshire councillor Jacqueline Henry said the local authority had decided to think beyond the usual electoral cycle, putting ‘Families First’ multidisciplinary teams into schools to support families, including giving financial advice.
There were warnings about the Scottish Government’s proposed expansion of free childcare. Writer Sue Palmer argued the expansion of formal education ignored evidence that play was how young children learn, something modern children get less and less time to do.
Eisenstadt warned the policy was “a political choice” because it focused on employability over child development.
“It is part of the solution, but don’t believe you can kill six birds with one stone. You can’t,” she said.
Meanwhile Scotland’s new powers over welfare can help achieve those national targets.
Dickie said topping up child benefit by £5 a week would have a knock-on impact.
Nevertheless, it will take more than “cold systems”, warned Carnochan. “Scotland has economy of scale, but we’ve lost our bottle,” he warned.