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Child Poverty in Scotland

The UNICEF table might provide some help to the hon. Gentleman. Ireland, which has become independent from the United Kingdom, is in the top 10, whereas the United Kingdom is in 21st place out of 21. Perhaps independence would be a useful and successful tool in fighting child poverty. As I was saying, the aim is to increase the proportion of income earned by the bottom 30 per cent. We could glibly say that one of the most important factors in fighting poverty is wealth. The relationship between the two came up in a book that was given to me by a lecturer in public health at Aberdeen university, ““The Health of Nations: Why Inequality is Harmful to Your Health”” by Ichiro Kawachi and Bruce P. Kennedy. The book demonstrates what we all instinctively know: generally, the greater the income inequalities in any country, the worse the health expectancy and life expectancy are in that country. Those problems are, of course, results of poverty. While the Scottish Government are aware of the need to increase GDP per capita to that of other countries similar to Scotland, we are also aware that the creation and sharing of wealth need to go hand in hand. If we are to have a society at peace with itself, with optimal health outcomes and the lowest possible poverty rates, that is a laudable aim. In my view, we will need powers additional to those that Scotland independently controls. That means that more powers would need to be devolved from Westminster to Holyrood. I am sure that the national conversation and the Calman commission will both be useful to that end. Perhaps a laudable aim for those two bodies might be to identify what new powers would help Scotland to tackle its terrible levels of child poverty, which, we have to remember, are above the UK average, while the UK is bottom of 21 nations in the UNICEF table. We need to look, at course, at the devolved levers. I think that the Scottish Government are using those. These are the slow-burn issues: health, education, skills and housing. Many of the witnesses that appeared before the Committee told us that the levers controlled by the Department for Work and Pensions were the most instrumental in tackling levels of child poverty.