Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300
- 311)
TUESDAY 20 FEBRUARY 2007
MR BRIAN
GORDON, MS
MYRA MACKENZIE,
MR JIM
MILNE AND
REV ERIK
CRAMB
Q300 Mr Walker:
Just to follow up on that, you would not know the answer to this
but a ball park figure, are there a number of families in Dundee
who are on low wages but both partners are working? Are there
high levels where there is a single wage earner on low wages and
many households where there are no wage earners whatsoever?
Mr Milne: I honestly do not know.
We do have stats for that but I cannot pluck them out of my head
just now, I do not know.
Q301 Mr Walker:
Does work tend to be concentrated in certain households, do you
feel?
Mr Milne: I honestly do not know.
I think the majority of two parent households will have someone
working and the vast majority will be the case but a lot of other
families have people who are in receipt of benefits and in receipt
of Disability and Incapacity Benefit.
Q302 Mr Walker:
You would say the vast majority of two parent households have
one parent working but what about single parent households, is
that where you see a lot of problems with worklessness?
Mr Milne: If you are a lone parent
you are not subjected to worklessness, I am sure you have got
your hands full all the time but you are not in paid employment.
There are very high levels of lone parents in Dundee who do not
work who are carers and are looking after their children. The
average age of a lone parent in Scotland is 35. People think it
is feckless young teenagers who got pregnant when they were in
their teens but that is not the case, the average age is 35 in
Scotland of a lone parent.
Q303 Ms Clark:
You will have seen in the national press that there are proposals
to encourage more and more lone parents back to work when their
children are younger. How do you think that is going to work in
Dundee? Do you think that is a good idea or do you think a lot
of those lone parents in reality would be better off working if
the jobs were there?
Mr Milne: I think it is a good
thing if the services are there, good quality childcare that is
accessible and affordable, and that is an area the Employability
Framework Group are looking at in Dundee as well. The problem
is we have had the welfare reform proposals, the Green Paper,
and we are now seeing ministers drip feeding information that
gives us a great deal of concern. Looking at lone parents, for
example, saying, "We have got to get more lone parents back
into work", what is going to be the outcome of that? Is it
going to be that the services and support are there or is it going
to be we are going to be taking benefits from them if they do
not go into jobs that they do not think are suitable for themselves?
We have got a situation where people who do not speak English
have been told now that if they are not going to learn English
there is a chance their benefits will be withdrawn. There is a
whole host of information coming now that gives us concern in
the sense that an element of compulsion will be what is going
to be used, it will be the stick and not the carrot. I think it
is important that we do provide people with the opportunities
to get back into work, including lone parents, but we need the
whole host of support mechanisms and services there that they
can access and take benefit from to ensure they can get back into
work.
Q304 Ms Clark:
At the moment in Dundee is there a support mechanism in terms
of childcare, for example, for lone parents who want to return
to work?
Mr Milne: Dundee does receive
Working for Families funding from the Scottish Executive and that
has been relatively successful in funding some childcare support
for families and support to get back into educational training
and that has been good. It was very limited when it was established
at first but it has been more generous over the past period. There
are a lot of things being done that were not there in the past
but more needs to be done.
Q305 Mr MacNeil:
Just on the European network that you alluded to earlier, do you
see any parallels or any differences between attitudes towards
mothers of young children and going into work?
Mr Milne: When the minister was
speaking about lone parents the other day asking how it is in
Sweden that 80% of lone parents work and in the UK it is a lot
less than that, of course they were not comparing apples with
apples. The reality is as soon as you have a child in Sweden there
are nursery services from being months old right through to pre-school
and primary school, the services are there. In Scandinavia and
Europe there is a lot more being done than there is in this country.
If you can afford it you can purchase it but there is no guarantee
that you can get nursery services or pre-school services unless
you have got the cash to pay for it.
Q306 Mr MacNeil:
Just following that up, from the European network again, and you
have said in Scandinavia, is there a country that is much worse
to be poor in than other countries?
Mr Milne: The UNICEF report the
other day said we are at the bottom of the pile. We are worse
than Poland and Portugal and over a whole range of indicators
the UK is absolutely crap. That is the situation that we have
got to look at and accept and ask how can we do things better,
how can we improve the lot of the children who are going to be
the future of this country because we are failing them badly.
That is not something we are saying as an Anti Poverty Forum campaigning
organisation, that is what UNICEF is telling us.
Q307 Mr Walker:
You said something quite interesting, Jim, because I think having
a job is very important but also being a parent is very important
and I do not think it should be work above all else. There should
be a choice for parents if they want to work but we should not
stigmatise those parents who are doing a very good job raising
their children, what we should ensure we do is when they want
to go back to work there are the mechanisms and training in place
to help them re-enter the workforce. I wonder if that would be
your view as well.
Mr Milne: The element of choice
is important and people should have the ability to go into work
if they feel that is for them at any given time. If they do not
want to do that, if they want to raise their family, a man or
a woman, it does not really matter, they should have the option
to do that and not to be disadvantaged by that process.
Q308 Mr McGovern:
Your memorandum rightly points out that benefits are a reserved
matter and both yesterday in informal discussions and today we
have heard about things like the National Minimum Wage, Tax Credits,
New Deal, et cetera. In your memorandum you say there are a number
of areas that could improve the plight of people in poverty and,
Jim, you have already quite comprehensively covered the school
uniform grant but you also mentioned school meals, access to travel,
Credit Unions, et cetera. Would you like to expand on some of
these suggestions?
Mr Milne: There are two things
there, Chairman. We did have a brief discussion yesterday about
the question of universality and when you look at where we have
got universal benefits, they are the most successful benefits
we provide. In Scotland we provide free travel for the elderly,
free care for the elderly, child benefit on a UK basis, all these
things are very, very successful and the point I made yesterday
was that we have £900 million of benefit fraud in this country
but that is only the tip of the iceberg compared with the level
of benefits people do not get because they are either ignorant
of the benefit levels they are entitled to or they just do not
know how to go about applying for them. We can see that universality
is quite important because everybody gets them whereas we have
got a situation at the moment where people are not getting what
they are entitled to. That is one element of that. When it comes
around to services for people, whether it be financial services,
which are very important, people being better trained to manage
the resources they have, and that is important, we should not
lose sight of the fact that we do not want people to learn how
to be poor and educate them how to manage in poverty, I think
that is the wrong message. What we want to do is improve financial
services to move people out of poverty. The Credit Union has got
a major role to play in that and a lot of work has been done locally
to promote Discovery Credit Union and getting people to join and
take advantage of the financial services they can offer. Obviously
when it comes to benefits, and we have discussed the National
Minimum Wage, as to the whole question of income adequacy that
I spoke about yesterday and touched on this morning, that is how
you are poor, it is about how much you have got coming in and
if you have got nothing in your purse at the end of the week and
you have kids to feed and meters to feed. That should not exist
in modern society. At the present time we are a very, very wealthy
country and it is a big argument to get into the question of redistribution
but I think that needs to be looked as well.
Q309 Mr Davidson:
Given that we are here from Westminster, are there three things
in particular that you think we ought to be going back to press
should be done that would help alleviate poverty in Scotland?
If you cannot think of them now maybe you can drop us a note saying
what the three are.
Mr Milne: The Chairman asked us
that yesterday and we said a couple of things about policy-proofing
and—
Q310 Mr Davidson:
It is a question of this being on the record.
Mr Milne: We have got five. Very
quickly we have five. We think it is really important that people
are involved in shaping policy. As I said earlier, the experts
on poverty are the people who have experienced poverty, so this
part of the consultation exercise that we are going through we
very much welcome and we think it is important that more of that
happens at local level as well as at national level because people
will be able to come up with solutions. When you look at the report
that we are going to send down to you there is a whole raft of
ideas that people came up with themselves on how things can be
improved for them. Income adequacy I have already mentioned but
a lot more needs to be done to ensure that people have got either
a living wage or an adequate income to ensure they are not living
in poverty. More support for people who are essential in society,
like carers as I spoke about earlier, people who get scant regard
in the world for the excellent work that they do. There are hundreds
of thousands of people in Scotland and millions across the UK
who are saving the country an absolute fortune and a lot more
needs to be done to support them. We do not disagree about work
being a vehicle out of poverty, we very much agree, but it has
got to be focused on the basis of more childcare, adequate and
affordable childcare, a flexible benefits system, support for
people who have got particular barriers to getting into work,
tackling the low wages by looking at the National Minimum Wage
perhaps and making it more generous, tackling discrimination because
it is still the case there are a great many people out there who
are disabled and have other barriers to getting into employment
who are discriminated against in society, so that needs to be
looked at, and obviously training and structure within the job
that you have that is going to give you some career prospects.
Lastly, to reinforce the case for Dundee, Dundee is an absolutely
smashing place, it has got so much natural beauty that people
are really resilient, and I think that was what Erik was saying
earlier on, and very enthusiastic about the city and that needs
to be understood. A lot of people think it is an image thing that
is the problem with Dundee, but it is not. Dundee is a smashing
place. There are measures that can be brought into place that
can make Dundee better and assist the council and the Dundee Partnership
to do more by ensuring that they have got adequate resources to
develop and provide the services people need in the city based
on the discussions that we had earlier about major job losses
and levels of poverty across a whole range of indicators that
people are suffering from. More needs to be done.
Q311 Chairman:
Can I thank the witnesses for their attendance. Your evidence
will be very useful and helpful to us when we compile our report.
We will certainly send you a copy of our report and recommendations.
Thank you very much for your attendance.
Mr Gordon: We also thank you,
Chairman, for coming to Dundee and hearing the problems that arise.
Chairman: Thank you.
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