NICCY’s Interim Chief Executive presents to the Joint Education Committee and Work and Pensions Committee

NICCY’s Interim Chief Executive, Alex Tennant, was joined by Nicola Killean, Children and Young People’s Commissioner for Scotland, and Rocio Cifuentes, Children and Young People’s Commissioner for Wales, as she provided evidence to the Inquiry on the UK Child Poverty Strategy, in relation to the devolved context, to the Joint Education Committee and Work and Pensions Committee at Westminster earlier this week.

She was asked about steps taken in Northern Ireland to address child poverty. Referring to the draft NI Anti-Poverty Strategy currently out for consultation, she noted: “There isn’t a major focus on children, which is very disappointing, so we don’t think that the Anti-Poverty Strategy is sufficient in terms of tackling child poverty… There is a gap in NI in terms of delivery on child poverty.”

She also highlighted the fact that there are certain things unique to NI – periods of time without a government; and the legacy impact of the troubles – that exacerbate child poverty.

The session focused on questions in the following areas:

• Experience of Child Poverty in devolved areas – variations and commonalities across the UK;
• Devolution settlements and how the UK and devolved governments work together to address child poverty;
• The value of a UK-wide strategy, and whether targets/measures are needed;
• The process of developing a strategy;
• Policy interventions to deliver on child poverty;
• Benefits of a child-rights approach.

Alex outlined the failings of the draft Anti-Poverty Strategy, criticising the move away from a lifecycle approach, which would mitigate against the need for a separate child-poverty strategy. She spoke about how, despite commitments to both an Anti-Poverty Strategy and a separate Child Poverty Strategy in the 2020 New Decade New Approach agreement, NICCY had said that these could be combined “if there is a significant focus on children; if we take a lifecycle approach.” She also said that “experts by experience must be involved in both the development of the strategy – and the monitoring and implementation and accountability processes.”

The key points that lived experiences need fed in systematically and how the voice of the child are crucial in highlighting the most important elements of a Child-Poverty Strategy was made – with Nicola Killean stressing that children and young people weren’t involved in the process in Scotland, meaning the strategy will have obvious gaps.

Roccio Cifuentes described how the Welsh strategy has a lack of clear targets and accountability targets. She reflected on how Welsh targets that weren’t going to be met were dropped, which is worrying as, inevitably, poverty levels will increase because of this. In agreement about the importance of targets and accountability, Killean described how in Scotland local authorities and the NHS must report against targets as a model of good practice, and a tool for culture change – with more focus on children’s rights. It was put to the committees that targets should be legally binding.

Highlighting the lack of engagement with devolved nations, Alex made the point that there is a clear need for political leadership and mechanisms for joining up across government departments.

The committees were told how addressing failings in the Social Security system would be the most beneficial aspect of a UK-wide child poverty strategy for children in NI, with the removal of the two-child limit being crucial. Alex reminded the committees of evidence from the Institute of Fiscal Studies which showed that “there would be a four-percentage point decrease in child poverty across the UK if the two-child limit was removed, equating to 550,000 children across the UK,” emphasing that “this is not an opinion, this is very clearly in evidence.”