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Child Poverty in Scotland

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Much of this afternoon’s discussion has been based on the report of the Scottish Affairs Committee, but I am sure its Chairman will not mind my mentioning that a month later a report was published by the Work and Pensions Committee on which I sit. It was called, ““The best start in life? Alleviating deprivation, improving social mobility and eradicating child poverty”” and it looked at the issues across the whole of the UK. What came out clearly in our report was the close correlation between poverty and disability. My right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke) has already mentioned that, and there is indeed such a correlation. People living in households in which there is a disabled adult or disabled child are more likely to be living in poverty than people living in households without disability, so what is done to provide services for adult disabled people will have a direct relationship with the poverty levels experienced by the children of that family. Once again, Mr. Deputy Speaker, you can imagine how upset I was to discover that £27 million was being cut from the SNP-Lib Dem Aberdeen city council’s budget of 14 February in what is now known in the city as the Valentine’s day massacre. That might have something to do with the disappearance of the money that my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill talked about. Included in those £27 million of cuts were services to disabled adults, so they will have an impact on the children in those families and may well make child poverty in Aberdeen worse.