Local Government and Communities Committee, 28 Oct 2009

Meeting date: Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Official Report 207KB pdf

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Child Poverty Bill

Item 5 is oral evidence on a legislative consent memorandum, LCM(S3)22.1, on the Child Poverty Bill, which is UK legislation. I welcome the witness panel: Nicola Sturgeon MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing; Kay Blaikie, principal legal officer at the Scottish Government; and Samantha Coope, team leader of the Scottish Government's tackling poverty team. I offer the cabinet secretary an opportunity to make some opening remarks before we move to questions.

Thank you, convener.

The draft legislative consent motion seeks approval for the UK Parliament to apply provisions in part 1 of the Child Poverty Bill to Scotland. The bill as a whole is intended to drive progress to eradicate child poverty throughout the UK by defining and setting in legislation targets to eradicate child poverty. The legislation is intended to support a co-ordinated approach within Scotland and throughout the UK, and to build consensus and momentum on tackling child poverty.

The committee will be aware that part 2 of the bill covers English local authorities and their partners, and that therefore the motion will relate only to part 1 of the bill. The particular provisions in part 1 that require legislative consent place strategic duties on the Scottish ministers. Members will have seen the draft motion.

To be more specific, the duties legally bind the Scottish ministers to developing a Scottish child poverty strategy within the first year following the bill's enactment and a revised strategy every three years after that. Those strategies have to set out the measures that the Scottish Government proposes to take to contribute to meeting the targets. The committee will also be aware that an amendment to the bill has now been tabled to introduce a requirement on the Scottish ministers to report annually on progress on the most current child poverty strategy and to lay the report before the Scottish Parliament. That amendment will simply strengthen the duties on the Scottish ministers.

The bill also provides for a new child poverty commission, which will be made up of experts in the field, to advise on strategic and technical matters. The Scottish ministers will be required to seek and take heed of the commission's advice. We will also have the right to appoint one of the commissioners. The secretary of state will be required to consult the Scottish ministers on the overall membership of the commission. Those arrangements are intended to ensure that our strategies are underpinned by the best evidence available and that we have as co-ordinated an approach as possible across the UK.

The provisions will help to strengthen our efforts to eradicate child poverty and galvanise our commitment. With both those aims in mind, I ask the committee to support the draft legislative consent motion.

Thank you for those opening remarks. Do committee members have any questions?

Good afternoon, cabinet secretary. You said in your opening remarks—and this was my understanding from the legislative consent memorandum and the other papers that we have been given—that the bill does not apply to local authorities in Scotland, in that it does not place obligations on them. However, other committee members and I got a letter yesterday from Councillor Harry McGuigan of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities—I do not know whether he copied it to your office—which said that COSLA was

"opposed to a new duty"

being placed on local government in Scotland, and that doing so was contrary to the spirit and practices enshrined in the concordat and a retrograde step. I find it hard to square Councillor McGuigan's trenchant criticism of the bill, which he seems to suggest lays all these new onerous and inappropriate duties on local authorities in Scotland, with the proposition that the bill does not apply to local authorities in Scotland. What is the situation?

The situation is as I outlined it in my opening remarks. I have not seen Councillor McGuigan's letter, so obviously I cannot comment directly on its contents.

Part 2 of the bill, which places duties on English local authorities, does not apply in Scotland, so no duties are placed on local authorities in Scotland by virtue of the bill or the legislative consent motion. Of course, that does not mean that local authorities will not have an important part to play in ensuring that we can meet the targets that the bill enshrines. In Scotland, local authorities will contribute through our arrangements with them, not through their having specific duties conferred on them. We have the national performance framework, the relevant national outcomes and indicators that set the direction that we have agreed already with COSLA, and the achieving our potential and equally well strategies, which will help us to meet the targets. Single outcome agreements can and do include indicators that are relevant to child poverty.

The difference between how the bill treats Scotland and England reflects the different relationships between central Government and local government that exist in Scotland and England. To be absolutely clear, the bill does not confer any statutory duties on Scottish local authorities.

I am happy to send you the letter so that you can have a look at it. It appears that COSLA has got hold of the wrong end of the stick as far as the bill is concerned. To reassure Councillor McGuigan and his colleagues, perhaps you will also confirm that, on matters relating to child poverty, the Scottish Government has no intention of placing any additional statutory duties or responsibilities on Scottish councils.

I am happy to give that assurance. There is no intention, whether through the legislative consent motion or through the bill, to confer such statutory duties on local authorities, and we are certainly not planning to confer any other new statutory duties on them at this stage. We are consulting on a separate piece of UK legislation around the socioeconomic duty in the Equality Bill, but that duty is obviously subject to consultation. In the context of the Child Poverty Bill, no statutory duties are being placed on Scottish local authorities.

Following on from that, do you not think it odd that local authorities will be the only elected bodies on which there will be no duty to contribute positively to meeting child poverty targets?

No, I do not, given the different relationship that we have with local government in Scotland. I make no judgment on the different relationships throughout the UK; I am simply explaining that we have a different relationship. In England, there is no concordat, historic or otherwise, between central and local government. We take the concordat approach in Scotland, which governs our relationship and sets in place the mechanisms by which we assess the performance of local authorities. The bill is simply a reflection of those different relationships. I do not mean that north and south of the border local authorities do not have a very big part to play in meeting child poverty targets. That has always been, and will continue to be, the case.

It is clear that many services will be delivered by local authorities. Although I am conscious that you do not have responsibility for local government, will you tell us how many single outcome agreements—or the other instruments to which you referred—presently include references to tackling child poverty? How can we ensure that local authorities are playing their part, as I am sure many of them are, and hold them to account so that we all meet the targets?

That is a fair question. You are right to say, as I have said, that local authorities have a big part to play. If memory serves me correctly, Councillor McGuigan and I are joint signatories to our tackling poverty strategy in recognition of the fact that central and local government have to work together on that.

Fourteen single outcome agreements contain an explicit reference to child poverty, but our assessment of the single outcome agreements for 2009-10 leads us to think that all single outcome agreements give priority to what is a key challenge in every part of Scotland. Because of differing local circumstances, councils and community planning partnerships will choose to meet that challenge in different ways. It is important that we assess the success or otherwise of those approaches and look at outcomes and indicators that will tell us whether they are succeeding. Household median earnings or the proportion of a council's population who are on out-of-work benefits, for example, are outcome measures that will allow us to assess whether the approaches that have been taken are succeeding.

Having developed your strategy, to which councils sign up, if at some point you feel that the outcomes are not as you want them to be, how would you redress that? Have you thought that far ahead?

I am sure that you appreciate that that is a big hypothetical question. Obviously, it is likely that different issues will arise in different areas, and we will want to address them. It is premature to say that we will find ourselves in that position. However, the Child Poverty Bill enshrines the child poverty targets in legislation and puts the onus on us as Scottish ministers to set out a strategy for achieving those targets and to report annually against progress. If the bill is enacted, there will be a sharp focus on whoever is in government to demonstrate progress towards achieving those targets and to take corrective action if progress is not sufficient.

I welcome your reference to the amendment to the bill that will allow for annual reporting, but I still have concerns about how we feed in the role of local authorities.

It was unfortunate that the letter was circulated to members late yesterday so we did not have an opportunity to pass it on to you, cabinet secretary. We were surprised to receive it individually rather than through the clerks. There is no question of ambushing you with it—

I was made aware only recently that the letter had been sent. I have not seen a copy of it.

One phrase in the letter is of concern. We all recognise that the common objective of the Scottish Government and the UK Government is to tackle this serious issue. However, the letter says:

"the suggested targets themselves, all associated with income levels"—

which you mentioned earlier—

"are problematic. They do little to capture the quality of life issues and the experience of poverty of a child."

What is said in the letter goes beyond the issue of any duties or powers that may be imposed on local government. We have the new relationship in the concordat between the Scottish Government and local authorities, and I understand the importance of the issue for authorities. However, the letter fundamentally attacks the principles of the Child Poverty Bill, which is UK legislation that the Scottish Government has bought into. Given the role of local government in working with the Scottish Government and other partners to achieve common objectives, there are consequences. The letter is very worrying in that regard.

As you will appreciate, it is difficult for me to comment on a letter that I have not seen. It may be that I was copied into the letter, but it has not found its way to me yet. Over the past couple of years, COSLA has always been a willing partner with us in addressing poverty. COSLA signed up to and was the co-author of "Achieving Our Potential: A Framework to tackle poverty and income inequality in Scotland". I do not want to suggest that COSLA has not been a willing partner, because it has been. Obviously, the committee will want to reflect on the contents of the letter.

I turn to the targets—targets to which the Scottish Government is very willing to sign up. The specifics of the targets that are to be enshrined in the bill were set by the UK Government. The legislative consent memorandum that the committee is discussing today does not cover the targets, which were decided by the UK Government.

As there are no further questions, I thank the cabinet secretary and her officials for their attendance.

Are there any issues that members wish to raise in our report on the LCM? Given the short timeframe, I suggest that we do that by way of e-mail.

I have no problem in recommending the motion to Parliament, but we should nail down the COSLA issue. If the letter is a complete irrelevance or was sent in error, that is fine. It should be noted, however.

We can discuss and deal with the COSLA correspondence, which did not go through the clerks and is not on our agenda today. However, I think that we are all in general agreement on the LCM. I propose that we agree on our report on the LCM by e-mail.

We may want to discuss the correspondence at a later stage. I propose that we place the letter from Harry McGuigan on our website.

From my questions, you know that I remain concerned that Scottish local authorities are the only elected bodies that do not have a duty to fulfil the targets placed on them. Obviously, I have the benefit of having read the letter, in which Councillor McGuigan says that councils will reach the targets in a series of ways. However, I do not understand why he does not feel that we all should be bound in the same way, to ensure that a partnership approach is taken to tackling child poverty. The committee has considered the issue in an inquiry and has real concerns about how it is being tackled. I seek advice on how to proceed on the LCM, as I want there to be a provision that says that we take on board the measures that I think the cabinet secretary said are in part 2 of the bill, as doing that would bring local authorities here within the limits of the bill.

I propose that we proceed on the basis of circulating the draft report by e-mail for members' agreement.

Before I close the meeting, I ask members to remain behind for five minutes to discuss future agendas.

Meeting closed at 12:41.