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Child Poverty in Scotland

I very much welcome having a debate on the Floor of the House that focuses on Scotland. Perhaps such debates should take place more often, and not only when elections are being held in England. Ironically, the most recent debate here to focus on Scotland was held when the debacle that was the Scottish elections took place nearly a year ago. I hope that, like me, Ministers will use what influence they have to bring matters affecting Scotland to the Floor of the House. I welcome the report from the Scottish Affairs Committee, and want to take this opportunity to pay my respects to our Chairman, the hon. Member for Glasgow, Central (Mr. Sarwar). He has provided wise chairmanship, and shown a willingness to allow members of all parties and with all points of view to make those views known during our sittings. I found the Committee’s various visits and evidence-taking sessions to be extremely useful. I am a little surprised that the hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. McGovern) is not present today, as I expected him to use this opportunity to campaign, as he always does, for a new railway station in Dundee. I was disappointed that the Committee was not able to visit my constituency. I know that that was not deliberate, but we did not focus as much as perhaps we should have done on communities such as Rigside and Kelloholm. They are essentially urban communities in a rural location, and suffer from some very specific difficulties that are not the traditional and often discussed problems associated with rural poverty. I have noted the response from the Scotland Office and the Scottish Government to the Scottish Affairs Committee report. On this occasion, I agree with the Minister that it is essential that the UK and Scottish Governments work together on these matters. We should not focus on our political and constitutional differences, as our key objective is to reduce child poverty. I also noted what the Minister said about local government. It is very important that the Department for Work and Pensions works closely and directly with local government in Scotland. Representatives of Scottish local government made it clear to the Committee that, since the devolved settlement and for no particular reason, the relationship between the DWP and Scottish local government was not as direct as it had been. I hope that that matter will be addressed. The Minister also referred to an important document—““Making British Poverty History””—that has been published and launched by my right hon. Friend the. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron). I shall be referring to it, as it is relevant to this debate, and I shall also say more about the report on Glasgow by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) that was part of his ““Breakthrough Britain”” series for the Centre for Social Justice. I was very pleased that the Glasgow report was well received, especially by the leader of Glasgow city council. Obviously, I am not about to agree with the Minister’s interpretation of the past but, given that today’s debate is to focus on the future, I will agree with her that it is not acceptable for the latest figures to show that 23 per cent. of children in Scotland—or some 250,000 children—are living in poverty. Those children have a low standard of living and are unable to access many of the leisure, sports and cultural opportunities available to others, and they are also at increased risk of educational failure, ill health and being unable to move into work when the time comes. They in turn are likely to bring up their children in poverty. Indeed, the most probable explanation for an adult being in poverty is that he or she was born in poverty, rather than their having suffered a mid-life catastrophe. It is clearly agreed throughout the House that addressing child poverty in Scotland should be a priority for any Government, but although I recognise that the Minister feels passionately about the subject, and that by and large the United Kingdom Government are expending a great deal of effort, I believe that the Government’s approach is flawed. They have placed too much faith in what simply spending more money on a problem can do. The cocktail of mega-money and micro-management has been characteristic of Labour’s approach in most areas of social policy, and in child poverty as in other areas the results have been mixed. I believe that three changes are required. First, the tax and benefits system should be simplified, and the disincentives to work that are built into it should be removed. Secondly, Government action should focus more on addressing the root causes of poverty, such as educational failure, family breakdown, indebtedness, drug abuse and crime, rather than merely addressing its symptoms. Thirdly, the Government have trusted communities and people too little. I should like to see central, devolved and local government supporting voluntary and community groups in their efforts to end poverty, even if that means giving up some control. As the hon. Lady said, the Government’s flagship policy was their tax credit system. That system, designed by the current Prime Minister and his boffins at the Treasury, is one of byzantine complexity. It is so complicated that even Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the Government body responsible for administering the system, does not understand it. In the last year for which we have data, HMRC managed to get more tax credit payments wrong than right. Make no mistake: this is not just a situation that ties up civil servants in recalculating payments. It is not even just a situation that has led to the loss of £5 billion in public funds through overpayment, fraud and error, although it has certainly done that. Most gravely, it is a situation that has seen many of Britain’s poorest families facing the prospect of repayment demands, and many others scared off even applying for tax credits, in case they receive such demands further down the line. That should alarm the Government.