Dismay at child poverty statistics

from The Scotland Courier

By Steve Bargeton, political editor

THE LIB/LAB Executive’s claims to have made progress in the war against poverty were dealt a major blow yesterday—just five weeks before the Holyrood elections.

The latest annual figures published yesterday show little change with 870,000 households living in relative poverty in 2005/06 compared to 860,000 the year before.

The number of households in absolute poverty fell slightly from 560,000 in 2004/05 to 550,000 in 2005/06.

Absolute poverty is defined as being a measure of whether those households on the lowest incomes—less than 60% of the median average income—are seeing their income rise in real terms.

And relative poverty is a measure of whether those in the lowest income households are keeping pace with the growth in incomes in the economy as a whole.

There was no change in the number of children living in either absolute or relative poverty.

In 2005/06 there were 130,000 children—12% of youngsters—classed as living in families suffering from absolute poverty. This compares to 300,000 children in 1998/99—but the 2005/06 total is the same as 2004/05.

Yesterday the charity Save the Children branded the statistics “disgraceful”.

Head of policy and research Douglas Hamilton said, “The child poverty target, one of the Government’s chief priorities, is now in serious jeopardy. These figures reveal that progress in Scotland has stalled over the past year.

“The Scottish Executive and UK Government strategies have not gone nearly far enough—the figures are disgraceful.”

Mr Hamilton added, “If the Government is genuinely committed to the target of halving child poverty by 2010, then urgent action and investment is needed.”

But communities minister Rhona Brankin insisted progress has been made. “The figures show that although there has been little change in the overall number of people in poverty from last year, we’ve made real progress on poverty since devolution,” she said.

“There are fewer children, adults and pensioners in absolute poverty than there were in 1998/99 and our drive to tackle poverty is having the desired effect over the long term.

“We have already exceeded our target to reduce child poverty by a quarter by 2004/05, ahead of the UK, and … we are on target to meet our promise to eradicate child poverty by 2020.”

Commenting yesterday on the 2005/06 figures, the SNP pointed to the increase in poverty figures in Scotland (income below 60% of the median).

Deputy leader Nicola Sturgeon said, “These figures are a shocking indictment of 10 years of Labour in power.

“Poverty figures are rising in Scotland and last week’s Budget that doubled the tax rate for low income households, increasing the burden for more than 800,000 Scots, can only have made the problem worse.

“Labour have had their chance and failed.

“Instead of a sustained focus on driving down poverty, Labour have wasted resources on the illegal war in Iraq, and plan to waste up to another £100 billion on new Trident.

“Scotland is a rich country but we are not the rich society we should be. And these disgraceful figures show that we are going the wrong way under Labour.”