Child poverty action should not focus on incomes, insists MSP

Scottish Government legislation to tackle child poverty has been branded a “missed opportunity” by a Tory MSP who insisted the solution to the problem is not just about increasing incomes.

Professor Adam Tomkins stressed the need to tackle the “drivers of poverty”, such as “addiction, family breakdown, unemployment and educational under-attainment”.

He was speaking as MSPs at Holyrood debated the Scottish Government's Child Poverty Bill which sets a number of targets for 2030 to contribute to the “eradication of child poverty”, including less than 10% of children in Scotland being in “relative poverty”.

The proposals would also require Scottish ministers, local authorities and health boards to report annually on plans and activity to reduce child poverty.

Communities Secretary Angela Constance said if the Bill is passed, Scotland would be the only part of the UK to have “statutory income targets on child poverty”, as she attacked the UK Government for removing these from legislation.

Ms Constance said this marked a “shift towards characterising poverty as a lifestyle choice rather than addressing the social and economic drivers that cause people to fall into or remain in poverty”.

But Prof Tomkins, an MSP for Glasgow, said while measuring child poverty is important, the Conservatives “strongly believe that taking steps to tackle, to reduce and eventually eradicate child poverty is much more important”.

He added: “This Bill includes various provisions to measure child poverty in Scotland, but on its own this Bill will not do anything at all to lift any child in Scotland out of poverty, and as such I think it is a missed opportunity.”

He stressed the need to “get to the root of the problem”, adding: “For us it's not enough to say that the solution to poverty is increased income.

“We need to dig deeper, to investigate and to understand, address and confront the drivers that leave families to have insufficient income in the first place.

“We do know quite a lot about what these drivers are, among them are addiction, family breakdown, unemployment and educational under-attainment. That's not an exhaustive list, but they are all relevant considerations.

“All of these are drivers of poverty in general and drivers of child poverty in particular.

“So our core contention in relation to this Bill is that no anti-poverty strategy will be successful unless these underlying causes of poverty are addressed in a robust and systematic way.”

Labour's Pauline McNeill said the Bill “lacks the ambition that is needed” - but added that parties “can work together across the Parliament to ensure that it has the level of ambition such an important issue requires”.

Ms Constance, however, insisted the proposals are ambitious.

She said: “I know achieving the targets set out in the Bill will be incredibly challenging - that is probably an understatement.”

Figures showing 26% of children in Scotland are living in relative poverty are “absolutely unacceptable”, Ms Constance said.

She told how the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank had warned child poverty will increase in the next few years “in part because of welfare changes imposed by the UK Government”.

Ms Constance continued: “By the end of this decade and the start of the next decade, we will see an increase in child poverty of 1.2 million to over five million children.

“With this Bill the Scottish Government is making a clear statement that child poverty is neither acceptable nor is it inevitable.”