Examination of Witnesses (Questions 480
- 499)
TUESDAY 20 MARCH 2007
MR JOHN
DICKIE AND
DR PAUL
DORNAN
Q480 Mr McGovern:
At the risk of sounding glib, anybody would say that any child
poverty is unacceptable, but whilst you say that progress has
been made, do you think that progress is acceptable? Do you think
it is enough?
Mr Dickie: It is not enough as
yet because we still have a quarter of Scotland's children living
in poverty which is clearly unacceptable and it is unacceptable
that we have to wait until 2020 to eradicate that, so the progress
is welcome.
Q481 Mr McGovern:
Is it speedy enough?
Mr Dickie: We would say no. We
need to see progress faster, but also we need to see new policies
that will ensure that the targets that we do have are met. I was
going to go on and broaden out this issue, that it is not just
about getting people into work, it is about investing in the benefits
and tax credits system to support those people who are in work
on low pay but also those people who for whatever reason, caring
responsibilities, sickness or disability, have a financial safety
net which means they and their children are not left behind. We
need to see further action on supporting people in employment,
action to remove the barriers to employment that parents face
and the barriers around childcare. Again, of course we have seen
progress in Scotland in terms of provision of childcare. For far
too many parents in far too many parts of the country childcare
is still unaffordable and inaccessible, particularly in some of
the most disadvantaged areas and particularly in terms of being
accessible to the most disadvantaged families. The current system,
despite investment in childcare tax credit, in Sure Start, in
Working for Families in Scotland, is still far too patchy a system
for the supply of childcare and that is going to be a critical
thing that needs to be got right if parents are going to overcome
that barrier to employment. Also, in terms of parents with carers
and families with parents with disability or long-term health
problems who are facing very real discrimination, lack of flexibility,
lack of support of employers in terms of accessing work providing
a genuine route out of poverty. We need to see action to tackle
this. We are concerned at the moment because there is a lot of
emphasis on what individuals and parents need to be doing and
some of the rhetoric and language from ministers suggested that
the barriers to employment are somehow to do with the benefit
system, whereas, in fact, there is limited evidence that the barriers
are to do with the availability of benefits or benefit rates,
the real barriers are to do with, as I say, childcare, to do with
employer attitudes, to do with the levels of support and encouragement
and the framework for supporting employers to take on people who
have been out of work for long periods of time. We need to see
much more focus on that side of the equation, more focus on flexible
working, again, real progress in terms of a parent's right to
request flexible working, but it is just a right to request flexible
working in which to provide an entitlement or a duty to ensure
that employers provide flexible working arrangements and take
into account people's parenting responsibilities.
Q482 Chairman:
If we make a comparison between child poverty and other forms
of poverty, how successful do you think the Government has been
in tackling child poverty?
Mr Dickie: This issue is really
useful to look at. What the progress on child poverty proves and
shows is that when government makes political decisions to tackle
and introduce these policies and invest in tackling aspects of
poverty that works, so we have seen real progress in tackling
child poverty and pensioner poverty where there have been similar
commitments and similar political decisions on policy making,
but in relation to, for instance, adults without children, we
have seen no improvement in the overall number of adults without
children experiencing poverty. To us that is an important message
both to the politicians but also to the public that if policy
works then the Government can tackle poverty and can reduce poverty
substantially, and has done in relation to child poverty and in
relation to pensioner poverty, so in that sense the progress in
child poverty has reflected the political will and investment
that has gone into tackling it. What we would also add is that
you cannot disassociate child poverty from the wider poverty experience
in Scotland and across the UK. The policy levers that have been
used to tackle child poverty in terms of child tax credit and
child benefit and all the rest of it, to some extent the value
of them is undermined by the fact that we have seen working age
adult benefits fall quite considerably behind average earnings
so that the driver of poverty for adults without children is also
contributing to and undermining the additional benefits that families
have received.
Q483 David Mundell:
Is it not the case that child poverty in Scotland remains very
high in comparison with adult poverty, particularly in comparison
with some of the European comparators? Why is that specifically
do you think?
Mr Dickie: That is the case for
children who are particularly vulnerable to poverty and I suppose
that is why we would argue at CPAG, and you would expect us to
argue, that it is right to have a particular focus on child poverty
because children are particularly vulnerable to poverty and are
at a greater risk of poverty than working age adults or pensioners.
Q484 David Mundell:
Let me ask you has it been more the case in Scotland than elsewhere?
Mr Dickie: Child poverty compared
with other forms of poverty?
Q485 David Mundell:
With adult poverty.
Dr Dornan: The ratio compared
with places within the UK or compared with international examples?
Q486 David Mundell:
Europe.
Dr Dornan: I do not know. That
information is all perfectly accessible and I could put it forward
to the Committee. Eurostat collect that in different ways, but
I could not comment on the ratio that other countries achieve.
If I could add briefly to what John said, looking at the two examples
is very interesting and I think it is right to stress that child
poverty is extremely high. Adult working age poverty is much lower
but it has not fallen. I think the issue that we would see is
that although our focus is on child poverty, there are links,
poverty is poverty, and if you are looking at conditions of single
working age adults, many of those become parents and, therefore,
if you are dealing with a situation where those individuals have
been living on, for whatever reason, unacceptably low levels of
income and that has had an effect either on their ability to pick
up skills and therefore progress, or if it has had an impact on
their health, their housing and all those sorts of things, there
is also an impact particularly on children which that may also
have, so I would not want us to get into the position of picking
up poverty here and poverty there. We think that the focus on
children is right, but there are links with other groups as well.
Q487 David Mundell:
What do you mean in your submission when you say that whilst child
poverty remains high, the number of children in poverty has been
decreasing? Does that mean that although there are fewer children
in poverty, those who are are still as poor or poorer than they
were in the past or relatively poorer?
Mr Dickie: The point is that we
have unacceptably high levels of child poverty in Scotland and
across the UK but recognising that there has been progress in
recent years in reducing the overall numbers of children living
in poverty, there are issues in terms of reaching some children
and families who are further below the poverty line and we need
to make sure that we are not just picking up and reducing poverty
for those just below the recognised 60% median income bar poverty
line. You were suggesting that some children were getting worse
off and we would not have said that.
Q488 David Mundell:
What is the relative position? Is the relative position that there
has been some incremental improvement for everyone, but just not
enough?
Dr Dornan: In terms of this key
measure of relative income poverty, and it falls under various
thresholds, not just the 60% but the 50%, there are particular
concerns about those who face very severe levels of poverty and
we share those, indeed CPAG published a book that we can send
in your direction if you are interested called At Greatest
Risk which looked at the situation of particular groups. Save
the Children, in their report Britain's Poorest Children, have
also done empirical analysis of those groups. I do not think we
know a huge amount about what is going on at the lowest levels
and one of the cautions that I would point out about picking thresholds
that are below 50% is that the data that underlies that which
informs us that is not particularly good and so you get quite
odd findings and you do not know how well it reflects reality,
which is why the Office for National Statistics publish at 50%
but do not publish below that. To the extent we are able to comment
from the 50%, the 60% and the 70%, I think we have seen falls
under those thresholds.
Q489 David Mundell:
Where do you stand on the urban/rural issue because the Committee
has had quite a lot of discussion about what it actually means
to be poor in terms of, to paraphrase it, you might be living
in what might be superficially quite an attractive, certainly
external environment, but not have access to services compared
with having absolutely no resources at all.
Mr Dickie: We have to be very
aware of child poverty in rural areas and sometimes it does not
show up, if we are looking at concentrations of poverty that show
up and show up in very severe concentrations of poverty, but children
live in poverty in families right across Scotland including rural
areas. If we look at the Scottish Index on Multiple Deprivation,
it does not pick up. None of the poorest small areas are in the
Western Isles and yet we know it has a higher proportion of people
living in poverty than the average in Scotland, but it is not
picked up by looking at some of the area based statistics, so
we do need to be clear about some of that hidden poverty that
exists in rural areas. We need to be aware of that when we are
looking at how we target resources. Yes, it is right to try and
target resources at community areas that are particularly disadvantaged
and have particular concentrations of poverty, but we also need
policies that reach individual families and individual children
wherever they are living and I think the rural dimension brings
up that quite well. It is quite interesting looking at the Scottish
Executive's Working for Families programme, which talks about
removing barriers to employment for parents with a particular
need, and it started off being particularly around childcare,
but transport has come up as one of the key barriers to work,
I think second, but I am not sure, but it was certainly a significant
barrier to parents who are looking to get back into employment,
so, again, we need to be very much aware of the rural dimension.
Q490 Mr MacNeil:
As an MP for the Western Isles, I would like to press you further
on what particularly you see in the Western Isles that makes you
say what you have just said?
Mr Dickie: I am not an expert
on poverty in the Western Isles, it is just that it is an example
of where—and I hope I have got it right because it is covered
in the report, Poverty in Scotland—by looking at
small areas and poverty on a small area basis, literally on a
ward and sub-ward basis, then it looks like there are no concentrations
of poverty in the Western Isles, but when you look at the overall
rates, and I think it is done by income deprivation, then the
Western Isles has a higher than the Scottish average level of
poverty under another measure, so we have to be quite careful
about how we use some of the measures of identifying concentrations
of poverty in terms of how we then allocate resources to tackle
those, so that we do not miss areas like the Western Isles which
by some measures look like they do not have significant problems
of poverty and disadvantage.
Q491 Mr MacNeil:
When you say the Western Isles is higher than the Scottish average,
what is the Scottish average compared with the UK average or within
regional averages in England, Wales and Northern Ireland with
Scotland?
Mr Dickie: We need to be quite
careful because we are dealing with different measures of poverty
so the key measure we have been using for most of what we have
been talking about has been people living in households with below
average income which we do not have available at local authority
level. In terms of HBAI measures of poverty, Scotland is nothing
particularly different from the UK as a whole. I think it is slightly
lower levels of child poverty but no major difference there.
Q492 Mr MacNeil:
What are the best and the worst areas in the UK?
Dr Dornan: You are looking at
the South East of England. In terms of the very specific point
around relative income, if I remember rightly the best is the
South East of England, but I would have to check that, but the
worst by an enormous amount, it is more than 50% of children in
low income households, is inner London, well, London overall certainly,
but inner London particularly. John is right to point out the
difference in terms of looking at those other ways and the difficulties
in comparability. Clearly, the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation
is also available but the dates vary and all the methods vary
to some extent, so there is a bit of caution needed there but
there are comparisons that the Committee could have a look at.
I do not think we could talk with any great degree of authority
without looking at them again, but certainly there is stuff that
we can send in your direction if it is of interest.
Q493 Mr McGovern:
In quite a few of your responses you have mentioned benefits and
entitlement to benefits. How do you think the Government should
go about ensuring that people who are entitled to claim benefits,
but are currently missing out, do claim them and do receive them?
Mr Dickie: It is about ensuring
that there is a wider knowledge of benefits and the issue of more
investment in take-up campaigns and promoting take-up generally.
I think it is also about investing in welfare rights services
across the country to ensure that there is local knowledge and
understanding of what benefits and tax credits people are entitled
to and that we reach out. One of the things that we are involved
in in Scotland is that we have traditionally been involved in
providing training and support just to welfare rights advisers,
but the vast majority of families never get access to a welfare
rights adviser, they are in touch with health visitors, they are
in touch with Sure Start workers and they are in touch with a
range of other frontline professionals. What we are trying to
do is ensure that at least basic understanding and knowledge of
benefit and tax credit entitlement is available to those frontline
professionals. I think that kind of approach of making sure that
where families look to for support that those kind of family workers
have at least basic understanding of the financial supports that
are available to those families, which quite often underpin the
other issues that families are facing, or health problems, or
education problems, or problems with schooling, if those frontline
professionals have an understanding of how at least to direct
people in the right direction for quality advice and information
on their benefit and tax credit entitlements, that would be an
important way forward.
Q494 Mr McGovern:
The frontline health workers that you referred to, health visitors,
et cetera, is it the case that they currently have no knowledge
whatsoever of benefits?
Mr Dickie: It is not necessarily
up to date quality knowledge and quite often it is not part of
people's jobs, it is quite a hard thing, family workers have got
lots of other particular professional responsibilities to see
to before providing any kind of advice on financial support benefits
and tax credits, but I think there is a lot more we could be doing
to make a basic checklist: "is this family accessing its
child tax credits, are they aware of it?"
Q495 Mr McGovern:
I think you almost read my mind. I was wondering whether health
visitors would be prepared to say, "I will take on this new
duty as part of my responsibilities". As far as I am aware
every council has a welfare rights department, would it not be
simpler for the health visitor to say, "I would advise you
to contact your local council".
Mr Dickie: We are not trying to
bypass that, we are working with this particular model looking
at working through local authority welfare rights services to
cascade out basic understanding and knowledge to those frontline
workers, most of that is based on knowing where to direct people
for the detailed advice and information. I think there is also
a wider issue in terms of promoting benefit and tax credit entitlement
which is maybe some of the language that we use around people
who are particularly dependent on benefits, around benefit dependency,
about the idea that quite rightly we look at work as being a key
way out of poverty, but we should not see anybody who is not working
as somehow a failure and reinforcing the idea that somehow claiming
benefits and being dependent on benefits and tax credits for your
income is in some way wrong or a problem. Some of the language
we hear around some of the direction of welfare reform and welfare
to work tends to encourage the idea that there is a problem with
claiming benefits and tax credits.
Dr Dornan: This is a very interesting
area. We often talk about hard to reach families that are going
through a number of different services and joining up those messages
is very important, even if it is at a level of signposting which,
for the reasons that John has stated, that is probably where you
are at. That is valuable in itself in the sense that you have
a legitimisation. You have a way of trying to get over the stigma
barriers that mean people often do not seek to claim what they
are entitled to. We see the results in terms of their income level
and their poverty. There is interesting stuff about the use of
data that we already have, trying to find and target messages
in a more sophisticated way about who might be entitled to particular
things. There is some mileage in there. That is particularly developed
when you are talking about pensioners but perhaps less when you
are talking about other groups. John has talked about welfare
rights and there are a lot of models around training and take-up.
There was a programme that the Local Government Association in
England did a couple of years ago called Quids for Kids which
was detailing some of the reasons why the children might be involved
and local authorities might be involved in take-up work. I would
firstly mention complexity. One of the most obvious reasons that
benefits are not taken up is it is very difficult to claim benefits
because they are so difficult to understand. I cannot remember
the length of CPAG's handbook. We produce a handbook that is used
widely by welfare rights workers and it is very many hundreds
of pages long. It is not easy to find your way through as a claimant.
The other thing is that you do not see the same take-up problems
in universal benefits as you see in selective benefits. That is
one of the reasons why CPAG as a child poverty organisation is
very committed to child benefit which goes to children irrespective
of income. Looking at the balance between means tested policies
which often suffer these problems and universal ones which typically
do not is quite important to make sure we reach families.
Q496 Chairman:
If we introduce universal benefits, the money will not be targeted
to those who are in most need. Rich people will take the benefit
from that.
Mr Dickie: It is about getting
the balance right. The problem with the purely targeted approach
is that too often the target is missed so that whilst in terms
of tax credit uptake it is relatively good compared to the previous
tax credit arrangements. It is still only 82% of families that
are receiving the tax credits that they are entitled to. Significant
numbers of families who are entitled to this key financial support
are not getting it because it is means tested; whereas child benefit
literally reaches every child and every family. It does reach
those who are most in need. I do not think we are saying everything
should be universal; it is about getting the balance right to
make sure that there is a basic level of financial support that
reaches all families by boosting particularly investment in child
benefit and ensuring that the balance of investment is significantly
going into child benefit. Particularly we are looking for an equalisation
of child benefit so that second, third and subsequent children
receive the same rate of child benefit as the first child. That
would make a significant contribution to lifting significant numbers
of children out of poverty and would also be very straightforward
and simple. There is a high take-up and it reaches those children
we want it to reach.
Q497 Chairman:
Do you think the child benefit for the first, second, third and
fourth child should be the same or do you think the government
policy is about right?
Mr Dickie: We should have an equal
level of child benefit for each child for several reasons. The
argument that somehow second, third and fourth children cost less
or should not have the same level of benefit does not stack up.
Secondly, it is a good way of getting additional money and support
to families in a way that reaches all the families we need to
reach if we are to make progress across the board on lifting families
out of poverty. It does tackle one of the key targets for government
policy which is larger families, a recognition that children born
into larger families are at a greater risk of poverty and therefore
it makes sense to provide at least an equal level of benefit for
second, third and fourth children.
Q498 Mr McGovern:
If we made more and more benefits universal, would there not be
an element of taxing beer to subsidise champagne? We are giving
rich people benefits that they do not need. Therefore, the people
who need the benefits are going to get less. There might be more
of them who receive it but they would receive less.
Dr Dornan: In a numeric way, if
you are looking at the benefit that reaches the most children
in poverty it is child benefit. It is not means tested. If you
looked at income support or child tax credit, though they are
more redistributive in the way in which it is described in pure
financial terms, they miss out a number of children. If you are
looking at getting it, you might argue that it is more efficient
in a financial sense to go down a selective route; but it is more
effective in social justice terms at reaching them to have an
element of universality in there. In terms of the other argument,
if you going to put all this money through a universal system
it is inevitably going to cost you more to spend less so the per
child payment is going to be lower, there is an interesting set
of issues about why benefits might be low. They might be low because
they are going to poor people. You might build political consensus
by showing that a lot of people benefit from a high level of child
benefit. That is an argument that is often ignored, but if you
look at where the public, attitudinal support lies you will find
that there is a fair degree of support for child benefit because
it is something that is taken for granted, that people know and
recognise. It goes to all children in the UK, something like 13
million. It is universally popular to that extent. There is quite
a political argument that could be built around it, aside from
the economic argument that says if you have limited resources
you go down the purely redistributive approach. I would lobby
as well for the political argument. You need to build a consensus.
John was right to highlight this point that we are arguing, that
there should be an equalisation of the rate for child benefit.
That has quite an anti-poverty impact. Obviously it is a balance
in terms of how you are looking at these things. We are not suggesting
that we would argue for the replacement of child tax credit with
child benefit. We are however arguing for a rebalancing of that
financial support towards child benefit.
Q499 Mr McGovern:
We took evidence in Dundee from the Anti-Poverty Forum in Dundee
and the spokesperson for that group was speaking about benefits
and making people more aware of the benefits they are entitled
to. I think I understood him correctly. He seemed to be saying
that, to use his words, there would be a danger of educating people
to be poor. Would you agree or disagree with that?
Mr Dickie: We shouldn't be moving
away from the idea that benefits and tax credits are there to
support people across society, to protect them, to ensure that
when they have children they have the finances to support children,
to ensure that when they are sick and facing illness or out of
work there is financial support to protect them from falling into
poverty. Ensuring that people have the knowledge and understanding
of what benefits they are entitled to seems to me to be a measure
of success, making sure that they are getting access to the financial
supports that they need to protect them from poverty.
| 
