The Scottish government is to withdraw from one of the UK government’s leading welfare initiatives in protest at Iain Duncan Smith’s decision to abandon key targets for measuring child poverty, the Observer has learned.
Scottish ministers have told the work and pensions secretary they plan to leave the social mobility and child poverty commission headed by former Labour cabinet minister Alan Milburn and want Scotland to be excluded from the legislation on child poverty passed by Westminster in 2010.
In a revolt that will deepen the political divide between Scotland and the rest of the UK, the Scottish government plans to introduce a distinct strategy on eliminating child poverty, in part by keeping the targets that have been dropped by the Department of Work and Pensions. The DWP is to scrap the child poverty reduction targets for 2020 set by Gordon Brown, by dropping a long-established method of measuring household poverty against 60% of average incomes, and will rename Milburn’s body the social mobility commission.
Alex Neil, the Scottish social justice secretary, wrote to Duncan Smith last week to warn him that he was withdrawing Scotland’s commissioner, Douglas Hamilton, effectively ending the commission’s role in helping develop policy across the different parts of the UK.
And this week the Scottish National party will table amendments to the welfare bill in the Commons seeking to amend the Child Poverty Act 2010 when the bill starts its committee stage on Thursday, to remove all the legislation’s duties on the Scottish government.
Neil told the Observer it was wrong that the DWP had removed the targets for children in working households. “We believe that to take people from working households out of the targets is absurd, especially because 67% of children living in poverty are living in a household where someone is working,” he said.
Scottish ministers plan to use the new, albeit limited, welfare policymaking powers being introduced as part of the Scotland bill, which will extend Holyrood’s tax-raising and legal capabilities. as part of the UK government’s response to last year’s independence referendum.
“We want a comprehensive plan to actually implement this. There never has been a comprehensive plan to do it – a practical detailed plan on how to eliminate child poverty. We need, as part of our overall social justice strategy, a much more detailed plan,” said Neil.
Duncan Smith told the Commons in July that he thought defining poverty as those living on incomes 60% below the average was crude and misguided: family incomes could rise or fall against a relative poverty line without any change in their material wealth or living standards.
A DWP spokesman would not comment directly on Neil’s demands, saying Duncan Smith is still considering his response. But he insisting that eliminating child poverty was still central to his policymaking.
“Eradicating child poverty is an absolute priority for this government, and the secretary of state has consistently argued that it is not enough to tackle the symptoms without also tackling the underlying causes,” said the spokesman.
“The new life chances measures announced in July are the foundation of a new, comprehensive way of addressing this issue and reflect our conviction that work is the best route out of poverty.”
But Neil said Duncan Smith’s alternative measures, of using drug or alcohol dependency figures, or family breakup data, was “a move towards characterising poverty as a lifestyle choice”, rather than looking at the structural causes of poverty.
He said Duncan Smith had not approached Scottish ministers before unveiling these reforms in the Commons in early July and had been hostile to all the government’s measures to devolve some welfare powers to Holyrood. “They didn’t consult us on this and frankly I don’t think that they care about Scotland or what we do,” said Neil.
Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister, has made it a priority for the SNP to oppose the Conservatives’ welfare plans and to invest heavily in welfare and social security policy in Scotland, allocating £100m to mitigate some UK government cuts.
She is planning to use new powers due to be enacted in the Scotland bill to vary housing benefit payments, control the work programme in Scotland, scrap the bedroom tax and potentially introduce new benefits.
Milburn was consulted by Neil about the Scottish government’s anxieties and its decision to quit his commission. He is thought to be sympathetic to Neil’s complaints, but would not comment publicly on the Scottish government’s resignation. Douglas Hamilton, Scotland’s commissioner, said the commission would continue working with ministers in Edinburgh until his role ended but made it clear it wanted Neil to think carefully about the new Scottish policy goals.
“As the Scottish government looks ahead at developing their own framework for tackling child poverty I hope that they will ensure that attention is also given to improving social mobility. said Hamilton. “Alongside measures to reduce poverty, more effort must be made to ensure that children from poor backgrounds can achieve their potential and progress to the top.”
