Chamber and committees

Thank you. We will move on to a question from Bill Kidd.

Does anyone else want to comment on that?

One of the themes in the briefing is a return to the Christie commission’s recommendations and the importance of preventative strategies. As I mentioned, it is a joint report by Audit Scotland and the Accounts Commission so, for the next series of questions, we will bring in the folk with local authority experience as well as those with central Government experience.

The principal purpose of our meeting is a round table to take evidence on the Accounts Commission’s and Auditor General’s briefing “Tackling child poverty”, which came out in September.

I welcome our witnesses. We very much appreciate your being here and giving up your time. We are looking forward to hearing the evidence that you are going to give us about your understanding of where things are. We are a public audit committee: we will be asking questions about what it is like out there for children who are growing up in Scotland, but we also want to spend a bit of time looking at the data, funding, delivery and outcomes. If you want to come in at any point, just indicate that to me or to the clerks, and we will do our best to bring you in. Do not feel obliged to answer every question that is put, but, if you are particularly keen to come in, we will do our best to bring you in.

One of the outcomes that we are hoping for from today is getting some good-quality information that will feed into the work that the Auditor General has said that he wants to continue doing on child poverty. He has prioritised that. We therefore hope that this morning’s session will inform his work as well as that of this committee and, I am sure, that of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee, which is carrying out an investigation into child poverty and the relationship between child poverty and parental employability.

I will start by asking members of the committee and members of the panel to introduce themselves, before we go to the first question.

We are coming towards the end of our session. On that last point, Mr Johnston, you said earlier that the data is in place to inform the second phase of the plan, but it is worth reflecting that the key messages in the briefing are quite critical of the Scottish Government. Key message 1 says:

“The Scottish Government has not yet demonstrated a clear shift to preventing child poverty.”

Key message 2 says:

“It is not possible to assess the success of the Scottish Government’s first four-year plan to reduce child poverty, launched in 2018.”

The briefing goes on to cite Bill Scott saying that there is not a link between spending decisions, outcomes and targets being met. That is one reason why we as the Public Audit Committee are keen to keep an eye on the issue and keep scrutinising it, and why the Auditor General and the Accounts Commission want to keep it under their watchful eye and produce further briefings.

Auditor General, do you want to say a word about that before I come to my final question?

Colin Beattie has more questions on this area.

Thank you. We will come to the human rights of children quite early on, Bruce.

I will put my first question to John Dickie of the Child Poverty Action Group. Although we are an audit committee, we are also interested in the human face of what is happening out there. Will you start us off by drawing on your experience to give some examples of the impact of living in poverty and of the experiences that you have drawn on from children and families who live below the poverty line?

There is a famous John Steinbeck quote that says,

“the line between hunger and anger is a thin line”,

which sums up what you are saying.

Good morning and welcome to the 27th meeting in 2022 of the Public Audit Committee. Under agenda item 1, do committee members agree to take in private item 4?

Members indicated agreement.

Under agenda item 2, do committee members agree to take in private the committee’s business next week, on Thursday 17 November?

Members indicated agreement.