 I welcome everyone to the 27th meeting of the Public Audit Committee in 2022. The first item on our agenda is for members of the committee to agree to take agenda item 4 in private today. Are we all agreed? Yes. We are agreed. Thank you very much. The second item is to consider taking the committee's business next week, Thursday 17 November, in private. Are we all agreed on that? We are agreed. Thank you very much. The principal purpose of our meeting this morning is to hold a round table to take evidence on the Accounts Commission Order to Generals report on tackling child poverty, which came out in September. Can I welcome our witnesses to this morning's committee? We very much appreciate you being here and giving up your time, and we're looking forward to hearing the evidence that you're going to give us about your understanding of where things are. We are a Public Audit Committee, so we will be asking questions about what it's like out there for children growing up in Scotland at the moment, but we also want to spend a bit of time looking at the data, looking at the funding but looking at delivery and outcomes. Can I just say to our witnesses this morning that if you want to come in at any point, just indicate to myself or to the clerks and we'll do our best to bring you in. Don't feel obliged that you have to answer every question that's put, but if you are particularly keen to come in, we'll do our very best to bring you in. One of the outcomes that we're hoping from today is that we will get some good quality information that will help feed into the work that the Auditor General has said that he wants to continue doing on child poverty. We hope that this morning's session will inform his work as well as the work of this committee and the work of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee, which is also carrying out an investigation into child poverty and the relationship between child poverty and parental employability. Can I start by asking members of the committee as well as members of the panel to introduce themselves before we go to the first question, and I'll begin Auditor General with you. Thank you. Good morning, everybody. I'm Stephen Boyle. I'm the Auditor General for Scotland. Thank you. I'm John Dickie. I'm the director of the Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland. I'm Bill Kidd, Member of the Scottish Parliament for Glasgow, Annesland. I'm Paul Johnston. I'm director general for communities in the Scottish Government. I'm Bill Scott, chair of the Poverty and Inequality Commission for Scotland. I'm Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland. I'm Hannah McCulloch. I'm national coordinator for local child poverty action reports with the Improvement Service. I'm Ryan McQuig, campaign advocacy and policy for action for children in Scotland. I'm Colin Beattie, MSP for Midlothian North and Musselborough. I'm Matthew Sweeney. I'm a policy manager in the children and young people team at COSLA. I'm Sharon Dewey, MSP for South Scotland. I'm Bruce Eddamson. I've got the best job in the world because I'm the Children and Young People's Commissioner for Scotland, so it's my role to safeguard and promote the rights of children. Thank you very much indeed. The human rights of children is something that we will come to quite early on, Bruce. Can I put my first question to John Dickie from the child poverty action group? That is, whilst we are an audit committee, we are also in the human face of what's happening out there. I just wonder, John, perhaps you could start us off by perhaps drawing on your experience to give some examples of the impact living in poverty has had and the experiences that you've drawn on from children and families themselves who are living below the poverty line. Thank you. I mean, quite extraordinary impact and we often talk about statistics and the briefing refers to the impact that poverty has on children's health, their education, their wellbeing, measurable impact. Of course, it has a real impact on just children's day-to-day lives, on their sense of identity, on their wellbeing, on their variability to just enjoy their childhoods. In terms of some of the feedback that we've had, we work through our Cost of School Day project, for example, in schools involving children and young people in schools to identify barriers to involvement at school that are created by poverty, by financial barriers. One of those young people spoke to us and said, if all your friends go to the school trips, go on the school outings and paraphrasing, but school trips after school clubs, that kind of isolates you from them. You're singled out, you're not with them, you're just a spare person and that gives a sense of what it feels like to a child to be not having the resources to participate with their peers. Others talked about the experience of being bullied. One person told us about it, one young person, because they were wearing the same shoes since P7, they were being picked out and being asked whether they were being told that they must be poor and were being bullied in their own words. They talked about feeling letting others down. One young person told us that because they weren't able to bring in a cash contribution to some classroom activity, they were letting the class down. They take it on themselves and they feel it. We know that parents go to extraordinary lengths to try and protect their children from the impact of poverty. Many children are protected. Families' parents will go without food themselves in order to feed their children. They'll put on a brave face, a mask, but we also know that at times that's just untenable, particularly at the moment, with the extraordinary increases and prices tipping families over the edge. We used to talk about impossible choices. The choices are just evaporating now for parents, and that does have an impact on parents' mental wellbeing, and that impacts on children's stress as well. I mean another example is when children talk about the other way around, children protect their parents from how poverty impacts on their day-to-day life. Maybe not mentioning that school trip that cost, there's been a charge for not mentioning that there's actually an after-school club that they could be going to or a football match or that their friends have asked them to go swimming or whatever, and they don't ask. It's that kind of, clearly huge amount of long-term damage being done in terms of education and health, but that kind of damage the day-to-day life of children in Scotland because their families just don't have the incomes that are needed to give them a decent starting life and to be able to just participate like their better off peers. One of the things that always occurs to me is that children are only five once, they're only ten once, and if we don't get this right now, there's an urgency to this, John, isn't there? Unless we get this right now, it's going to change the cost of those young people's lives. Every opportunity we missed, every year it was passed, that's a generation of children that have been affected unnecessarily by that lack of opportunity, by that stress that that poverty has caused them and their families. I suppose that's something that hopefully we'll come on to talk about. A lot of the building blocks are now in place and we understand what's needed. I think that there's a shared understanding around this table about what's needed to end child poverty in Scotland and to meet those child poverty targets. I think that there's a big issue around scale and pace so that we deliver on that and ensure that a five-year-old, a ten-year-old next year, a year after, doesn't have to decide at school, doesn't have to end up in a queue at a food bank with her mum. There's an urgency around this. Does anybody else want to come in on this question? Families have told us that poverty limits their children's opportunities, freedoms, choices and fundamentally their rights. Families have to make the heartbreak and decision, if you can call it decision, even feeding the meter or trying to feed their family and it's that constant stress. Families feel isolated and abandoned not just from their peers but from the state, who has meant to help the families. For example, some of our support workers went in to see a family. One of their child was off school because they had cold feet. They found out that it was chillblanes because they didn't have any shoes. When they come home, they have to wear their coats. Other families tell us that when the kids come home straight from school, they're straight in bed to keep warm. They eat dinner, what little dinner they have there. They can't invite their friends over. In fact, one mother has said that they encourage their son to go to their friend's house because they'll know they'll get a biscuit, they'll get something to drink and it'll be warm. We've had families that have had to rely on a camping stove to heat their food that they have. We've had a nine-year-old boy just recently say to their mum, don't get me any Christmas presents, I know we don't have any money, don't do Christmas dinner, Christmas is just an ordinary day for us. As you say, that's not childhood. Children are aware, and it's right that they're aware of the facts, but they shouldn't have to be stressed about everyday life. We've caught a shame that Scotland has this poverty, but we should be sick with anger that is happening. That's just some of the stories. There's plenty more that I can give you, but this is the real life that people, if you can call that, as one mother said. It's just impossible, we literally can't live, and that shouldn't happen today in the third decade of the 21st century. There's a famous John Steinbeck quote, which says that the line between hunger and anger is a very thin line. Bill Scott, you wanted to come in, Bill? I think there's a misunderstanding about the scale of poverty in Scotland. Most of us, when we refer to relative poverty, about one in four children. But work by my colleague, Vice-Chair of the Commission, has shown that in the first 10 years of life, a majority of Scottish children will experience poverty at least in one of those years, and often for two or three of those years. We then want to talk about how adverse childhood experiences impact on children's lives when they become adults. We know again that poverty is a huge indicator of whether they will have adverse childhood experiences because relationship breakdown is much more likely when your parents are living in poverty. Homelessness is far more likely when your parents are living in poverty. The impact on children's lives does not stop when they are children. That stigma is carried into adulthood. Again, we know that the pandemic had an enormous impact on children and young people's mental health. That is being exacerbated by the new cost of living crisis. JRF, Joseph Roundie Foundation, have carried out a large-scale survey. They have found that 4 million children in the UK are now living without adequate access to food. That has increased in households with children by 50 per cent since April this year. Children are literally going hungry, but, as John and Ryan have said, the impact on their parents as well. One of our experts by experience panel is a mother of children, a lone parent. She says, for breakfast and lunch, it's a slice of toast, maybe a biscuit to take with meals. Again, the JRF research shows 9 million, 9.7 million adults, nearly one in five households in the UK have gone without food on one or more day during October. This is before winter has really hit. This is the impact on families right now. As I said, that impact does not stop. It goes on. Children's lives are affected. The life expectancy is affected. Their mental health is affected. I absolutely agree that it is something that we need to be angry about and be determined to take action on because we should not tolerate it. I'm going to move on now and bring in Bill Kidd, who's got a question to put Bill. Thank you very much, convener. Can I ask a question specifically—it's a more technical question—of Ruth Anderson, the commissioner. Can I ask the commissioner's opinion and responses on the extent to which the Scottish Government's plan to tackle child poverty supports the rights-based approach in line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, so as to try and see how we here in Scotland, in terms of what the Scottish Government's plan is, actually resonates with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, please? We need to start by poverty is a human rights issue. It was the biggest human rights issue facing children and young people. When I started this job five and a half years ago, that was before the pandemic, that was before the recent exceptional increases in cost of living, and it's hugely concerning. We aren't doing enough, and the continuation of child poverty is a political failure and a political choice. We need to make sure that we're taking a proper rights-based approach and seeing this as a state obligation. Traditionally, we've often talked about poverty and child poverty as linked to the right to an adequate standard of living—a safe warm home, good nutritious food. I've started now to talk about it much more as a right to survival and development, because the failure to properly address child poverty is having a catastrophic effect to children across Scotland, and we aren't doing enough to address that. The direct links to the right to education, an education that develops children to their fullest potential. Children are being absolutely failed because they're not able to access education in the same way. We're hearing stories about children not going to school because they've not got the school uniform, they're being bullied, they're not able to engage in that full-school experience of school trips and things like that. They're going to school hungry, so the real importance of things like school meals are absolutely key. The disproportionate effect on some groups of children and young people—disabled children, children with disabled family members, young care experienced children, black and minority ethnic children, children of prisoners, children in single-parent families and recognising the gender-based impact of poverty as well. We need to do a lot more to make sure that we're focusing attention on supporting children—children have told us. One child said, when you're poor, you give up on your dreams. This is how visceral it is. Another said, when I think of poverty, I think of inequality. It's not fair and it's not right. Another said, and I think that this is crucially important, the most unfair thing is that the Government knows that families are going through hard times but decide not to do anything about it. It's really important when we're looking at Government planning that we're setting this within the context of the obligation within the Convention on the Rights of the Child to use all available resources to the maximum extent possible. I think that there needs to be much more focused on public budgeting, human rights budgeting at all levels to ensure that we're demonstrating that use of all available resources to the maximum extent possible. That's not yet happening. I think that there's also another big human rights gap in terms of participation of children and young people, particularly those children and young people who are most directly affected by poverty. There's a lot more about ensuring that their voices and experiences help to develop some of the planning and the responses to that. While I welcome the Scottish Government's focus on child poverty, I welcome the fact that this committee and other committees are taking your responsibility seriously as human rights guarantors, we are failing children at the moment. We are not doing enough. I think that children and young people are rightly angry and, thus sadly, losing hope, which I think is hugely concerning. I think that there needs to be a much greater level of urgency. There needs to be a much stronger focus on the human rights obligations on states, recognising the right that children and young people have to benefit from social security, the right to an adequate standard of living, the right to be involved in decision making, the right to have decisions made in their best interests. But particularly the obligation on the state to use all available resources to the maximum extent possible and to make sure that we can demonstrate that. As we move towards fulfilling the commitment to incorporate the Convention on the Rights of the Child into our domestic law, which I hope will be back before Parliament very shortly, this is going to be one of the real issues that we need to focus on at every single level. Are we able to demonstrate that we have properly taken a rights-based approach to budgeting and ensuring that children's voices and experiences are part of that and that we are delivering? At the moment, I do not think that we are. Thank you very much for that, because that is a proper background to the whole issue and not just support, because sometimes you can say support something, but that is more putting a signature on a line and that is the end of it. Can I ask the Scottish Child payment and the introduction and such? How much do you think that might have impacted in terms of what you are describing there, please? It is hugely positive. People have described it as a lifeline. Again, we need to start accelerating the provision of getting direct financial support to families, so we should be looking to make sure that we can increase that and ensure that payments are getting to families. There is a lot that can be done around making sure that families are getting everything that they are entitled to. Again, the organisations around the table who have been doing amazing campaigning work on this will say that it is hugely positive. Those payments can be an absolute lifeline, but we are not doing enough. We need to do more. Obviously, a lot of social security powers are reserved to Westminster and that is why I am working very closely with my colleague children's commissioners in the other devolved jurisdictions in particular to put focus on the UK Government, which needs to do a lot more around social security. At the Scottish Government level and at the local authority level, we need to make sure that everyone is doing everything that they can. We would say that there are some really positive steps, but they need to be escalated and increased because they are not meeting the demand. One of the key messages of the Accounts Commission Audit Scotland report is that, number four, the views of children and families living in poverty are not always meaningfully considered as policies and actions are developed, implemented and evaluated. That pretty much is what you have said, Bruce, isn't it? I do not want to put Paul Johnson on the spot, but I think that it would be useful to get a view from the Scottish Government about that and whether you accept that as something where improvements are required. Can I just say from the outset, convener, that I really welcome this discussion? I'm grateful for it and I do not intend for a minute to be here as the Government official seeking to in any way say that we've got this all nailed. We clearly don't. I accept all that we've heard and the harrowing stories that we've heard already. I hope that we are all around the table determined to do all that we can to address the issues of child poverty that we have heard about. I think that colleagues around the table recognise that this Government has identified tackling child poverty as a key priority. As we've just heard, the Scottish child payment is hugely significant in that regard. I hope that we can come on to that in a bit more detail given that the expansion is happening this very month. Of course we are seeking to develop policy by taking into account the views of children and young people to answer your particular point, convener. Could we do more? Yes. That's something that we are looking at every single area of policy that's set out in best start bright futures, our new plan, to say how can we ensure that the voices, the experiences, the views of children, young people and parents inform the way in which we go about delivery. We have heard their perspectives in developing the plan. We do work closely with a number of the organisations around the table and in particular benefit from the experts by experience panel that Bill has already referred to. It is part of our policy making. We are determined to ensure that it is all the more a part of our policy making as we proceed. Any assistance from the committee and from other panel members in that is very welcome. Bill, I'll just bring it in. Very briefly, I referred to the experts by experience panel. The commission established the experts by experience panel so that we could work in partnership with those directly experiencing poverty to develop our own policies and recommendations to the Scottish Government. They were very much at the heart of our recommendations on the new child poverty delivery plan. We worked with Bruce's office to make sure that children and young people's views were taken on board. At the moment, the commission is carrying out a series of cost of living visits to local projects to speak directly again to people experiencing poverty as a consequence of the cost of living crisis. One of the most concerning things that we are hearing on those visits are the number of families whose parents are in work and are getting all the benefits that they are entitled to but are still not able to pay their fuel and food bills. That is a huge concern because it means that poverty is spreading up and out west. Those that we have up until now are considered households that are getting by. They are no longer getting by. They are now experiencing poverty. That is going to be a huge concern for the Scottish Government, for everybody in Scottish society. One of the themes in the report is a return to the Christie commission and the importance of preventative strategies. It is a joint report by Audit Scotland and the Accounts Commission. In the next section, we want to bring in our folk with the local authority experience as well as a central government experience. I am going to ask Colin Beattie to put forward a series of questions and points. The Auditor General has summarised on page 5 of his report the different areas of responsibility between the UK Government, Scottish Government and local government. It is quite clear that the vast majority of leavers remain in the hands of the UK Government, which does not mean that the Scottish Government and local government are absolved from the actions that they take. The question that I would ask is how can the Scottish Government and local authorities make a shift towards more preventative action while at the same time helping kids that are currently living in poverty? It is an important question, and it is something that has been signed up to the Christie commission in all its recommendations. We have already touched on the importance of involving communities in how they evolve, design and implement services. I think that the report notes one of the really good examples of prevention that is on going through early learning and childcare expansion, which was a really big joint project between the local authorities and the Scottish Government. That managed to do both. At the same time, there were savings delivered for families just now, but there is also that investment in young people or children at that really important stage before they are five years old, which we hope will have those impacts on the poverty or the entertainment gap as they go forward. The challenge when it comes to prevention is that we have come off of two crises as we came through Covid, and so much of what we were doing is how we move into that crisis response. Local authorities had such a big role when they were delivering free school meals during the holidays, delivering the bridging payments while the Scottish child payment came online. The capacity that that takes up makes it challenging to, at the same time, do that more preventative and long-term work. I think that what we are trying to do is do both of them at the same time. If you look across the drivers that are set out in the plan, there are some of them where local authorities are very focused on that short-term mitigation response. However, there is also work and employability, but what we can do to support families is to work through tackling the poverty or entertainment gap. I think that it is challenging. I think that it is more challenging in the financial context that we have ahead, but I think that local authorities and the Scottish Government as well will let Paul speak to that. Perhaps Hannah might be keen to come in at that point. As Matthew said, over the past few years local authorities have had to have a very crisis-focused response to the pandemic and the cost of living crisis. I think that they have done that effectively in quite a dignified way. I tried to take a cash-first approach where possible, so that is on-going. When you look across the local child's poverty action reports, which are the annual reports that local authorities and their planning partners produce, you can see that there is a willingness and a desire, and there is a beginning of engaging those more strategic preventative policy levers. The policy reports touch on housing, economic development, employability and childcare. Those levers are being engaged and they are part of the discussion, but I think that there is still a long way to go. From looking at the reports, you can see that, while those areas are mentioned, we really need to drive down deeper into sharpening the focus on the particular impact that those policy areas can have on families with children and the priority families in particular. Yes, it is good to have affordable housing, but is it in the right places that families can get their children to school? Is it suitable for large families? We really need to be more targeted in that way. Also, not just listing housing, childcare and planning. It is what is the vision of how these things work together to create communities where there are quality jobs that parents can take up because they have affordable childcare, they have good transport links and really having that holistic outlook. We are beginning to see that. Those that are leading on this locally site, the practical barriers that stop that from happening. Whether it is capacity getting those people around the table, people having different funding constraints and budgets, different reporting requirements, working towards different outcomes, there are legal barriers in terms of data sharing. None of those things are insurmountable, but they really need high-level strategic thinking, both at local level and at national level. We are starting to see that. We have the tackling child poverty programme board, for instance. At local level, local reports tend to be developed and signed off by community planning partnerships rather than councils alone. We are starting to see that, but absolutely it is not enough and it is not happening fast enough. Paul, you are an obvious person to come in now, but what I would ask you is to comment on my original statement, which was about most of the levers that are with Westminster. How do we link in with Westminster's child poverty policies? I presume that they have some, and I have not seen them, but I presume that they exist and that the Scottish Government links in with that to try to create an effective response to that. Back to the question also, how can better preventative action be taken while dealing with the current situation of children in poverty? As a matter of fact, it is only the Scottish Parliament that has the legal target now in terms of where we must get to on child poverty by 2030 and that those targets do not exist at a UK Government level. I probably should not say much more in terms of what the Scottish ministers would want to argue that the UK Government should do. Clearly, some of that is into political space. I would say that our new child poverty delivery plan, Best Art Right Future, set out our needs to work very closely across all of Scotland with all partners, and that must include the UK Government. As I have seen at first hand over recent months, it is very close working between Scottish Government, DWP, local government and third sector organisations in some of our pathfinders. The plan sets out the pathfinder work that we are undertaking in Dundee and Glasgow. In both of those areas, as Hanna has set out really effectively, what we are simply trying to do is get all the partners around the table, make sure that we are joined up as we possibly can, if there are barriers in place that are preventing us from working cohesively together, let's get rid of them and let's put the focus on children and families and what they need. We are taking quite an intensive person-centred approach, which is about partners. It doesn't matter which partner it is, let's just agree who will do it here in this community. How can we engage best with these families? How can we identify what the issues are that are leading to them being in poverty and how can we support them to get out of poverty? That is possibly the best example that I have seen of us working with the UK Government and local government very practically. What DWP can offer is their work coaches. In some cases, we are seeing that they are playing a really effective role in supporting some of those families' access work. I'm happy to say more on that, if you wish, but I know that I haven't answered your point about prevention yet. I think that, as Matthew said, probably the two greatest examples of prevention that I would cite from recent Scottish Government-led activity is early learning and childcare and the Scottish attainment challenge. I think that the Auditor General recognises both of them as examples of very significant investment—multiple hundreds of millions of pounds of investment in preventative activity there for children and young people. However, I recognise, as has been said, how much is being done just to deal with the current pressures and issues that families face. Hence, the payments about getting money into people's pockets, you might say, are responding to an issue rather than preventing an issue happening. I think that what we are seeking to do in the plan is wrestle with this tension. We have to get money into people's hands now, but we also want to invest as much as we can in preventative activity. We want to go further on prevention. Before Collin comes back in, there have been a few people who indicated that they want to come in at this point. I think that this has stirred things up, Collin. I'm going to go to Bruce first, then I'll come to John Dickie and then to Stephen Boyle. The point on preventative spend is essential in looking at human rights-based budgeting. It's important in human rights terms to recognise that the obligations sit at lots of different levels. Right now, in Geneva, the Human Rights Council is undertaking the universal periodic review of the UK looking at the progress on human rights. A number of countries will be challenging the UK Government and Scottish Government as part of that process to do more to address cost of living and, specifically, on child poverty. It's really important that, when we look at the human rights obligation, which is to use all available resources to the maximum extent possible, to use every level possible, we need to look at the responsibilities that sit at every level. In human rights-based budgeting terms, that prevention element is really key, because setting aside the individual rights that children have and the impact that we know that addressing poverty has at a community level, it makes huge economic sense, because the failure to properly support families has massive economic costs in terms of children not fulfilling education objectives and going on to fulfilling economically productive careers. It has huge impact on the NHS and the physical and mental health of children and parental mental health. It has knock-on consequences into children in conflict with the law, because there is a connection between poverty and finding up in conflict with the law when we know that children experience poverty are disproportionately criminalised. The failure to take the rights-based approach and putting in preventative spend, putting in those safe, supportive relationships around families has massive economic consequences, so it's really important that we put in the preventative spend. Some of the discussions that I have been having recently with early years practitioners, youth workers and health visitors are all telling me the same thing, that they are not getting the support that they need after two years now plus of the pandemic, just being really burnt out and experiencing things that they have not seen before in terms of infant malnutrition, in terms of mental health challenges in the community. It's really important that we properly fund and support those that are able to get in and around families and those trusted relationships, those community practitioners, particularly early years, youth workers, health visitors, all under massive strain, ensuring that we can provide more support within education and school-based settings, where we know that supports of things like mental health counsellors and others. Getting direct money to family is absolutely essential, and I think that that more needs to be done there, but we also need to look at the support services around family and see that as a real preventative spend, because the failure to address poverty and the failure to put support in around families has a catastrophic economic impact of that political choice to not address poverty in the way that it needs to be addressed. John Dickie I think that this point about prevention is one of the most important messages coming out of the report. I suppose that just to add to what's being said, I think that what's really important is that in order to reach those 20, 30 targets and to go further and actually end child poverty in Scotland, we'll need a greater transformation in the kind of economy we have and the kind of labour market we have so that parents are able to act properly. We have access to decently paid jobs that have the childcare infrastructure around them that allows them to do that, but also the kind of jobs, the kind of economy that provides secure, decent, stable sources of income. That is recognised. I think that in the chapter of delivery plan there's reference to the economic transformation strategy. I think that there's still a lot of work needs to be done there. What does that actually mean in practice? How, between now and 2030, are we seriously going to change the kind of economy we have and the kind of labour market that we have? It means that parents will have access to those decent jobs and that we have the investment in childcare to enable parents to take up and increase their hours of work where they're able to. I think that's an area that we need to look into more. The other key point that I make is that we're at a slight concern that if you could infer from the report that investment in social security isn't preventative and actually investment in social security is preventative, the reality is that even in a perfect labour market, even where jobs were available, paying decent wages, the reality is that for some parents at some points in time, they're not going to be able to earn enough from earnings in order to provide for their children. Whether that's to do with ill health or disability or that balance of childcare and working responsibilities. We need to have a social security system in place, a well-funded, adequate rights-based social security system in place and the investment that's been made in the Scottish child payment is a hugely big contribution to creating that social security infrastructure that will provide for families. Sometimes we are responsible because we talked about it and we lobbied for it as a way of lifting children out of poverty. It does that but it also protects a whole lot of children who are in families who are at great risk of poverty, provides support to them and long-term we need that social security. It can't do all the lifting and at the moment it has to do too much to the heavy lifting because of the problems in the labour market because parents are unable to access decent jobs but it's an important part of the preventative infrastructure as well. To your first point, there's a lot of talk in this debate about employability but actually two out of three children living in poverty before the cost of living crisis were living in families where at least one parent was in work so there is that economic fundamental that needs to be addressed as well. Stephen Boyle, Auditor General, please. The paper that the accounts question and I produced, building a number of recent publications that we've made about shifting balance of spending towards preventative spend to achieve better longer-term outcomes, rather than, as Bruce rightly says, characterise spending at the moment as interventions to treat the symptoms, rather than the longer-term planning that produces more sustainable. The first thing that I'm seeing in the report is that this is complex. I'm not understating the many factors that will influence better outcomes. Nonetheless, one of the key messages that we made in the report is that there has to be a step change to break the cycle, otherwise notwithstanding the Government's ambitions to meet the targets by the end of this decade. To do so will be very difficult, particularly as we note the fiscal challenges that we're currently facing on the back of the pandemic, the current cost of living, and all of the external factors that are influencing that. Last thing that I'm going to be referring back to the opinion pieces that both myself and the Accounts Commission produced reflecting on 10 years post-Christie. We began to explore some of the accountability and incentive mechanisms that are in place. Very much well-composed reference to partnerships. No one single organisation can tackle this, but what we often saw in that analysis is that when you're looking back, what really the drivers that people will be evaluated upon for the success of them and their roles, leaders across public bodies in Scotland, was too often that was focused on individual organisations? That change needs to happen for some of the longer-term impact that we're speaking about through this report. The risk, of course, is that our successors 10 years from now will be having a similar style of conversation about how do we break the cycle of child poverty in Scotland without some of those really radical steps that we now need to take. Thank you very much. I'm going to go back to Colin, I think, who's got some more questions in this area. There's actually an extension on what we've been talking about. The Scottish Government and Local Government obviously have key roles, and it's important that they work well together. Do they work well together? Do they work well with their third sector partners? Is there evidence of a shift away from the silos that used to exist? Are they being broken down? Are we seeing joined-up thinking, joined-up working? Maybe Bill, you might like to comment. I think that during the pandemic we actually saw very good examples of Scottish Government, local government, the third sector, right down to local community groups that aren't usually even recognised as contributing to wellbeing in the healthy communities, all working together to protect some of the most vulnerable people in our society, ensure they got food, ensure they weren't social isolated, et cetera. Unfortunately, although we were told that we were going to build back better, some of those barriers that were broken down during the pandemic have been re-erected, and we need to return to that way of working. I'm glad to hear that that is happening in the pathfinder areas, but it needs to happen much more widely. To return to what we've been talking about, up until now we have not attempted the systemic transformational change that is needed to our economy to ensure that people don't fall into poverty. We prevent that in the first place. If they experience ill health, disability, caring responsibilities, et cetera, there is inadequate safety net to protect them in those circumstances, because neither of those things are in place at the moment. That's what needs to be achieved. We need to look at the barriers that are there that prevent people working together to achieve that transformational change, because we should not be allowing them to stand in our way. What we also need is to have the rights-based approach that Bruce was talking about to budgeting, which ensures that every pound spent is contributing to transforming our economy and reducing poverty. Every pound spent is well spent, because without knowing what is actually working and what isn't working, in other words, what impact are the hundreds of millions of pounds being put into that? What impact is that achieving? If it's not doing what it was set out to achieve, we need to stop doing it and channel that money to what does work. For that, we need better data, et cetera, because, again, local government is sometimes operating in the dark in terms of some of that, so monitor, evaluate. Third sector is used to doing this. We don't get any money unless we do it. Government needs to get much, much better at doing it going forward. Ryan, what's your view? Getting back to that joined up approach, there's lots of talk about a triple lock for pensioners. Families should have that triple lock. They have a triple lock of the UK government, they have a triple lock of the Scottish government and local government, but at the minute, instead of lock step to a journey where people are out of poverty, it's getting split in different directions. We know that at the minute you've got caught because climate is an emergency. We've been calling for something that's like a UK strategy, probably call it like a cog, a conference of governments, so that's like all governments, including local authorities, come in and get and say, what is actually the root problem of us not doing, getting families out of poverty and lay it on the table so that other people can come in and give their experts' view just like in caught. I think that puts a bit of the pressure on it and we have the analysis and then it's up to government to say, okay, the Scottish government has targets, the UK government got rid of the targets without getting rid of poverty, but how can we actually make sure we're all on the same journey and making those, like say, the Scottish government's done big steps with the Scotch Child payment, but the whole of the three governments need to do giant leaps to make sure that we actually reach our targets. So, for action for children, we would think that we need that sort of UK round table and people with experts' views of lived experience should be in there as well, and that would give a focus. Just like COP has given a focus on climate change, I think we need cog or whatever you want to call it, that sort of forum to actually put the spotlight on. Paul, that doesn't sound as seamless an operation as you seem to indicate between the different agencies. Do you have a comment there? I'm just reflecting on Ryan's suggestion, which I think is a really good one, so welcome views from others on that. Absolutely, we need that joined up political leadership wherever possible to really make sure that everything that can be done by all the different levels of government and involving third sector businesses are being done. To respond to your particular challenge, I see the join up. I see us working together in terms of the governance that Hannah's referred to, so we've got a programme board that is now in place to ensure that we are delivering on the plan that was set out earlier this year. That's including representatives from local government and from third sector organisations to ensure that we're working together on the actions here. I've referred to some of the join up on the ground, but I am challenged by what Bill says about whether post Covid some of the barriers are being re-erected that were torn down. The Covid recovery strategy that the government published a year ago set out an ambition to ensure that we do not see those barriers in place again and we have oversight arrangements so that where we are hearing of barriers we will act to basically ensure that they are removed. I would hesitate to speak for the Deputy First Minister who chairs that particular board, but I could say that he's been very clear where we see evidence of barriers that are getting the way of join up that are there to help people in poverty. We want to know it, we want to do whatever we can. If that's action at Scottish Government level, we'll take action at Scottish Government level because we must preserve some of the good stuff that we saw in terms of how public services work through Covid. It sounds like Paul is offering himself there as the go-to person if there's any silos or barriers that you come across. I think Matthew wants to come in. If that's okay, just briefly. I do think that there has been an improvement in how the Scottish Government and the local government are working together and I think Paul mentioned some of the structures that have been put in place about that, but I think compared to the last plan I think we feel there's been more of an opportunity to influence that and I think that's reflected in how it's now much more of a plan for Scotland than how we work together more broadly. There was something about what Bill spoke about going back to some of where we were before. I think during the pandemic there was that understanding that we were in that emergency situation, so some of the way in which funding was allocated there was more relaxation, some of the ways in which the approaches that came from very strict guidance, statutory responsibilities, all of these things there was an understanding, it was just trying to get done what we could to support people. Whereas we are now in that stage where we are sort of returning to where we were before, and for example one of the things that I'm quite conscious of is local authorities have this duty to create local child poverty action reports. They also have a duty under the Community Empowerment Act to do a local outcome improvement report, which is about tackling the qualities. They've got an integrated children's services report, which is about a range of children's services, but we know child poverty essential to that and they've got work and education about how to tackle the attainment gap. Often some of the structures in terms of the reporting kind of encourages some of that side-all working instead of breaking it down, I think. Last, very briefly, I think that there's something about how do we use that programme board to make sure that we're sort of levering in all departments at the national level and then that feeds down into what local government is doing across different services to kind of come into one space. I think that that leads us nicely on to a question that Sharon Dowey's got, so Sharon, I'll bring you in there. I'd like to look at data and outcomes, basically to make sure that the actions that we're taking are achieving the outcomes that we desire. It was something that Bill just said there, it's making sure that every pound we spend is well spent and we're focusing on the right areas. So, could I ask how can the Scottish Government and councils improve national and local data and how do we ensure that it fully captures and measures the impact of actions on outcomes? Who wants to come in on that one, Hannah? I think that when we talk about data, it's a very complicated issue that sort of goes without saying, but for me there's something about drilling down into what we're talking about when we're talking about data. For me there's sort of three layers to data. There's data that's about understanding where child poverty is, the scale of the problem and what kind of families are experiencing it and that kind of information is obviously helpful because it will help us direct resources, understand the scale of the problem and design and fund the kind of interventions that we need. I think that at local level it's problematic, the data on child poverty in terms of there's a lag of up to 18 months in terms of getting that data on relative poverty, the four measures that are used in the legislation, the data that supports our understanding of progress towards them is not available at local level for one, two it is, but the others it isn't. It's fine to have a child poverty rate for a local authority area, but what you really need to make useful interventions is something more granular that tells you within an area where the poverty is and how to use it. There's work being done by the Scottish Government, by Public Health Scotland, by the Improvement Service to try and make that picture clearer. I'm happy to share that. There's also exceptional work being done at local level to build that picture. Glasgow, for instance, has used its housing benefit and council tax reduction data to get a really granular picture of poverty that will change over time. We'd like to support other areas to take a similar approach, but local conditions are different. You couldn't superimpose that to an island or rural authority, for instance, because it would make families identifiable. It's a nuanced approach to data and continuing to invest so we understand the problem. The second layer of it is data that allows you to identify and reach individual families to say that our information from education tells us that this family really needs help. Let's approach them and target them with the support that they need. Again, that's happening, but GDPR and data sharing is a massive issue there. Both in terms of how data from DWP and HMRC can be used and how data from Social Security Scotland can be used locally. I think that that's something that there's definitely work to be done in overcoming those barriers. The final aspect of it for me is that impact that you're speaking about. I think that's a particularly important one and particularly difficult. It's unfair to expect local authorities to be able to show that the actions that they're taking are having an impact on the headline relative poverty rate in their area, because so much is out with their control. Brexit and Ukraine and UK Government policy and Scottish Government policy, but it's absolutely legitimate to be able to expect them to understand how the things that are within their control, their employability processes, their childcare, the benefits that they deliver are properly evaluated and information on that is disaggregated. So we understand the impact on individual families and communities and then can use common sense to say well if we're doing that and we're impacting those families then we are making a contribution to tackling child poverty. So again it's very complex and very nuanced and it's easy to oversimplify I think, but a lot of work to be done. I agree with everything that Hanna has said and what I had in mind was the real importance of good local data and I wouldn't underestimate the significance of the work that the Scottish Government, Public Health Scotland and the Improvement Service are doing to try and ensure that local areas can have a more informed approach about what's going on in their area and how to tackle it. I also agree with what Hanna has said. From my experience of the pathfinders it does actually get down into a really, really granular level of data about the numbers of families in this small area where by sharing information we can identify how best we can provide support and there are absolutely issues around GDPR and information sharing that we have to work through to ensure that we're doing all we can for families while staying within the law. When it comes to a national level I would just point the committee to the much greater level of supporting data that we published with the 2022 plan. If you look towards the end of the plan there are 10 annexes, they are full in terms of the data and evidence that we've set out. What I would say is that this is an area where the Scottish Government is committed to being hugely open and transparent. The data is all there for others to drill into and to scrutinise. There is a lag and there have been issues through Covid in terms of data collection. We will be publishing data and doing that on an on-going basis but we want to do whatever we can to address the lags. There is work to do there at both national level but I think particularly getting that rich picture locally so that it can be used for action is vital. I agree with everything that has been said. We need better data collection. We need some expansion to some of the data that we are ready to collect to make sure that some of the smaller groups, in particular black and minority ethnic households, are not well represented in the data that we collect already. We need boosted samples so that we have a better picture of their lives. However, the priority groups that are identified in the child poverty delivery plan, the risk poverty is so much higher if there is a disabled child or a disabled adult in the household, if you are a black and minority ethnic household, if you are a lone parent household, if you are a larger family or if you have a very young child. We know that the groups that are most likely to be living in poverty and if local authorities are working to improve their lives, they will lift a proportion of those groups out of poverty. If they do manage to do that, they will improve the child poverty figures. It is much better targeted use of local resources to make sure that the priority families in particular are being assisted will help. It is not exclusively that because poverty does, as I say, affect a majority of children at one point rather than their lives. However, if we do manage to target more of the resources in the priority families, we will see improvement. I am picking up a point that the bill is making about how important it is that we collect data on who has been reached by the services that are being delivered. When we are talking about employability services or childcare services, do we actually—sometimes they are put in the plan that we are running this employability service, we are running this childcare, but it does not necessarily tell you whether that is reaching families that are at most risk of poverty. Just making sure that services are collecting data on who they are reaching with their services and ensuring that those matches with the priority groups are a really important part of that. The other point that I was making was that there has been real improvements in data, so I have been campaigning on this for too long. There is far more information about who is living in poverty, who is affected, what children are affected and where they are than before. There are gaps, there is always more that can be done, but we should not be using that as a cover for not acting. There is a big link between the use of data and the recommendations around involving children and families in shaping policy. We might not have all the detailed data, but we know who is at most at risk of poverty at every level. We can be going and speaking to those families and asking them what are the barriers to accessing the services, what is holding you back, what is stopping you from being able to improve your earnings in the workplace, access the support that you need and act on that. Can I pick up that point with Hannah McCulloch and Matthew Sweeney? Para 44 of the report is pretty clear in its critique of quite a patchy return by local authority area. The report says that people with experience of living in poverty, the point that John Dickie has just been making, were rarely involved in developing plans. Only four out of 27 reports available had an introduction signed by the chief executive. The level of sign-off of reports was seen as an indicator of the level of commitment to tackling child poverty. Most reports use data well in describing their local area, but then goes on to say that not many reports considered monitoring and evaluation carefully. I wonder whether you have any reflections on that. Do you accept that as fair criticism? Matthew, first of all, then I will bring Hannah. I will have a lot to add on that as well. I think that there are probably bits of it. This is the review of the first year of the plans back in 2019. There has now been three years. These were always going to be iterative processes in which there would be a learning and an understanding of how that grows. One thing that I would say is that if you go back further, there is something for me about local government that did a lot of that work about involving people with lived experience before this came on the agenda nationally. If you go back to the work that happened in Renfrewshire and the poverty commission that they did there, similar work that happened in Fife and Dundee, there were really good pockets and good practice. We were putting that on the agenda first before some of the duties that have come along to create the reports. I think that there is something more to do. I think that there is always more that we can do, but I think that there is something about thinking about how we engage people and do it in a way that is meaningful. Don't just invite them along to a meeting. We need to make sure that we're asking you things. How do you link it into some of that broader work that you've got in terms of your duties of community planning, your specific roles about locality planning for those areas that are experiencing the poorest outcomes? How are we making sure that we're doing this in a strategic and joined up way? Is that always getting captured in this plan or is that in one of the other ones that I spoke about before? Similarly, I've got a bit of a query about just looking at the sign-off and who's signatures on the front of the plan. To me, what's much more important is around the process that you go through to develop it. The duty is jointly on local authorities and health boards, and I think that we've already mentioned that we need all public sector partners to be involved in that as well. I'm less worried about who signed off the plan, but more about that, as they work through the development of the plan, you're using those sort of community planning structures to work together. You're working across services within local government. You're working across services in health, police, et cetera, to try and make sure that you're doing it. I think that there's always more to do, and I think that probably if we probably did the same review just now, I'd hope that we've made progress since then, but I think that there's definitely more for us to work from from some of those points. That's useful to put on the record. The report mentions the Renfrewshire Poverty Commission, which I think you will remember of if I'm informed correctly. Matthew's just alluded to it as well. You said earlier on that there was a limit to what a local government level some of these big questions can be tackled, but I don't know whether you want to, A, come back on that part of the report I read out to you, and then B, perhaps give us some of your reflections? I mean, it's a question that covers a lot of aspects. In terms of lived experience and how meaningfully that is incorporated and taken into account, it's definitely an area where I think there is improvement. If we look at the latest round of reports, there is definitely more acknowledgement of the importance of that. There isn't a uniform way in which it's being done, and it is an area where local authorities are seeing to learn from each other, but you can see it being done more meaningfully. What a lot of areas are wrestling with is having a stand-alone group of parents that you bring in to consult on those issues, which I think is positive and important in some areas have done that, but it's also, as Matthew said, about embedding that across all the policy areas that you would expect to be represented in these reports through community planning and mainstreaming involvement. There is progress, but more progress to be made. In terms of your question about what was the second part of your question? Your experience as somebody involved in the poverty commission in Renfrewshire, whether that brings with it an experience and an insight into what can be achieved at a local level? Absolutely. When you talk about the legal duty to produce local child poverty action reports, it's important because it raises the profile of child poverty locally. It brings it to the attention of senior groups and senior leaders. That's why the commissions and the approaches that developed organically at local level were powerful and made serious changes because that came from a senior level of leadership and commitment across the organisation. I think that that's what this legislative duty has helped to develop and which we'll hopefully see improve as that embeds going forward. I'm going to move us on now to look a little bit more about the funding aspect of the anti-child poverty strategy. At this point, I'm going to invite Craig Hoy to put a couple of questions to you. Welcome, everyone. If I could start with the Auditor General, if I may, and then branch out from there. In relation to the overall spending between the period of 2018-19 to 2021-22 on tackling child poverty, your report says that that's £3.3 billion, which by my very basic maths often flawed. That's about £3,400 per child living in poverty or experiencing child poverty. Perhaps you could give some insight into how that money has been tracked and whether or not you think that the measurement that Bill Scott referred to in the evaluation is sufficient. I remind you also that your report also says that child poverty has not reduced and that there's no evidence to suggest that the actions from the delivery plan at the midpoint and midtally where the assessment was taken had actually reduced child poverty. Perhaps a bit about how that money is tracked and how effectively it's being spent. Good morning. I'm happy to start, as I'm trying to cover as much as I can. Referring to the report, you're right. We noted that the Scottish Government estimates that £3.3 billion was spent between 2018-19 and 2021-22. The conclusion that we went on to reach from that, there's not always clear the impact of that funding has had on reducing child poverty. Some of that we've covered already this morning and we touched on in the briefing session with the committee a few weeks ago. Part of that is to do with data quality and just reiterating Hannah's point about the lag in terms of when data is produced. The real importance of that, and I think that if I may just to repeat Bill Scott's point from earlier, which I absolutely agree with, that in tracking the spending, it fundamentally matters that there's good quality data to assess the impact and outcomes from that. If it's not having the desired impact, stop doing it and move on to something that can better influence it. In the report, we looked to draw of that £3.3 million, and that doesn't include universal spending. It's been covered already today that there are many levers on tackling child poverty, some with Westminster, some with the Scottish Government and some with councils. I tried to analyse that further. I talked about the £1.6 billion spent on Scottish child payment and best start grant, £1.5 billion directed at low-income households and further monies attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic. In our report, I'm repeating that point, Mr Hoy, that this is a huge amount of public spending. I'm clear that that's the fundamental impact interest of the Public Audit Committee. There is a lot of money at play here that can have the desired impact to reduce child poverty in Scotland. What matters, though, is that there's effective data monitoring of that data, evaluation and then change, risk of repeating myself, that if it's not having the desired impact so that it can move on to do so over the course of the 2030s and the delivery of child poverty reduction targets. One last point, I think that you hint at it in your question about how we are making that evaluation. We don't make strong conclusions in this point about the range of indicators that are used, but we do wonder about the four indicators that are used to assess child poverty. They are used the consistent description of them, how accessible and meaningful they are for people who are experiencing child poverty in Scotland, and just curious, is that helpful for policy makers and scrutineers like yourself? I'm happy to elaborate on that any further, as you wish. Just in relation to the Scottish Government's perspective, Mr Johnson, when Joe Griffin was before us, we discussed the pupil attainment gap and the £1 billion that had been spent. We were left with the impression that he wasn't sure whether or not the money had been effective or whether or not it had been spent in a way that would bring or close that gap. Should we have similar concerns in relation to child poverty, there is clearly a will to tackle child poverty, but are we, to perhaps borrow an expression, likely to repeat the same mistakes in spending that money in a way that isn't proving to be as effective as it could be? It's a hugely important area. I'm very keen that we work closely with Auditor General and the Accounts Commission to ensure that we are doing all that we can. The detailed evidence that we've already published sets out in quite a level of granularity the impact that we expect the Scottish child payment and the other social security interventions to have. It's not the case that we're committing all this money without an underpinning evidence base. We set it out in the document. I don't have the page to hand, but about the percentage reduction in child poverty that we anticipate the increased level of Scottish child payment will have. What we must do is be continually evaluating whether our projections are realised given all the changing context, the cost of living pressures and inflationary pressures. We are about to embark on quite a substantial further exercise in terms of saying that there was the evidence that underpinned the plan. Those were the measures that are intended to enable us to reach the targets, but we have to keep that up today based on what's actually happening on the ground. Thanks for that. I'll just open it up to other stakeholders. There is an issue in relation to the ring-fencing of funds, both to local government, which limits their ability to, perhaps with a laser-like focus, go in the local areas and target child poverty, but also in relation to the way that funds are allocated to third sector organisations. I'm just wondering perhaps Ryan might be one for you in the sense just to talk me a little bit about the way in which funds come to you. In a fast-moving situation like Covid or the cost of living crisis, often the funds that you apply for are for specific projects, which limits your ability to then spend that on other projects. I'm just wondering if, in terms of the funds that you get from government and other organisations, whether or not more flexibility in the way that you can spend that would allow you to target things in a more innovative way? If you don't mind, I'll go a bit by the first one about the budget and allocation and stuff like that. We suggest that the Scottish Government should publish, and it sort of goes on what Bruce talked about, a rights-based budget and a children's budget. It actually says what the allocation the Scottish Government is giving that benefits children, so families can track how much is being spent, but key then is that evaluation about what's that spend that's actually done. That's something that we're suggesting that should be done for that on the point about the flexibility and ring fencing. When Covid happened, it's true that it was cash first getting out there and the added benefit of the third sector, especially for children when it was first locked down. We got cash to deliver groceries or fuel cards to families, but it wasn't just that that made the impact. In fact, we had eyes on the ground as well, and we noticed that someone had mental health issues or struggling, so it was that extra layer that the third sector provides in there. The fact that we could be flexible in using that money, maybe it is about shopping, but we know that it is mental health, maybe taking a person out for a coffee so they're not away from their child because it was 24-7. That's what the pandemic encapsulated about inequalities. People were in their house 24-7, but people experienced some poverty, usually an overcrowded house. It was usually damp. They didn't have devices or internet connection. They didn't have spaces to go out in the garden. When they did have to shop in, it was a local shop that was high in prices and they couldn't have transport to go anywhere else. That flexibility allowed us to use that money. I used to work for Oxfam, and some we had money given and we said to a group of women and men, would you prefer cash or would you prefer this suite of shopping? The women said, give us cash because we can actually barter and do things. The guys were like, just give us the shopping. If you give more of that flexibility, we can actually make more of that pound. It's the families themselves that say, this is what we need, not what the Government says we need. There is learning to be done for that flexibility because quite a lot of our funding is we get funding for a set goal. If we do another set goal, you have to then go back to another funding round. It's the same person. The money should follow the person or the family and not the other way around. It seems quite transactional for this child saying, we've done this. We can't go on to this because this is another funding stream that we have to wait for and then fill in another form. How does that make that young person feel or the family feel? It doesn't make them feel inclusive and stuff. There is a lot of learning to be learned from what happened during the pandemic. I know you've got to be accountable to it, but we in the third sector are very accountable. We have all the stories and we have the outcomes. There is that sense of cost benefit analysis that could be done as well. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has done some significant work on this in public budgeting in relation to the realisation of children. They did a big global study in 2015-16 and issued the 19th general comment. This is when the Committee on the Rights of the Child issued authoritative statements and guidance to Governments. I think that the general comment 19 provides a really powerful framework in terms of rights-based budgeting that we should be looking more at. The principles of public budgeting for children's rights that they set out include a lot of the issues that we've been talking about in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, equity, transparency and also sustainability. That really important point in terms of what we hear consistently is that it's project-based funding, that it's complicated and it doesn't need the needs in terms of that sustainability test in terms of making sure that the support is there. I would strongly recommend the connection to the advice of the Committee on general comment 19. I think again particularly as we move towards the incorporation of the UNCRC and I think my frustrations at the delay in that are very well documented and very well known 18 months after this Parliament unanimously agreed to incorporate in over a year since the Supreme Court but we do hope that it will be back for reconsideration soon. One of the key things within that legal framework is an accountability against article 4, that obligation to use all available resources. So I think it's really important then that we and part of my role is to ensure that we're providing the tools in relation to human rights-based budgeting and we recently published a toolkit on children's rights impact assessments for local authorities as well. I think these rights-based tools and this rights framework is really key in terms of how budget setting and that speaks to some of these issues around ring fencing but also around making sure that we're assessing efficiency and effectiveness, also that there's proper participation of children and young people and families and that there's that sustainability. I think there's a really key point as well in terms of budget setting is that lived experience from children and young people and that can be done in lots of really powerful ways. When the special rapporteur on extreme poverty, the former special rapporteur Philip Alston did his assessment on the UK and came to Scotland, we took him to a primary school in Glasgow and he was sitting on the floor with the paints out having fantastic discussions with very young children about their experience of poverty within their community and we took four of the 10-year-old children to Geneva when the special rapporteur was delivering his report that the Human Rights Council and he said in his presentation that it was their voices, their really powerful voices and their understanding of quite complex things about budget setting, the recognition that there isn't an infinite amount of money and that decisions had to be made but those really powerful voices are essential in framing budgets and what they do talk about is a lot of the stuff that Ryan was saying in terms of sustainable projects that are based on those trusted relationships and all of the work that we see from early years and youth work and others that really powerful third sector contribution is absolutely essential but I think that there's huge concerns about the sustainability of the funding and what I'm hearing very strongly from third sector professionals particularly in early years and youth work is that the situation is really dire at the moment that the funding isn't there, that people are leaving the professions and we need to move to a different model where we're ensuring that that support is there in a sustainable way. I think that there is something about the fact and it comes back to some of the conversations that we were having before about targeting and how we can design services based on those views and involving children and young people. I think that because of the said in some of our submissions to some of the other committees in their pre-budget scrutiny that two thirds of our spending is in some way directed by national priorities, which makes it really hard where is the opportunity that you have to make some of those more radical differences to change some of those things, which makes it quite difficult. I think that there's so much in what Bruce is saying, I think that we agree with and would like to move towards and I don't need to be defensive but it's some of the challenges that we have just now in terms of some of the processes so there's a problem across the whole of the public sector. We've been on a period of one year budgets for a very long time so how do you be able to get to do that on your plan and similarly I think it's a similar issue about local authorities and the options that they have to offer longer term funding to third sector partners as well if they've only got a year to your budget it's kind of the knock on effect. And similarly at some of the timescales that we have in terms of when we get sort of known the allocation of the central grant for local government which can be so much of our budgets now and then the sort of legal deadline of sort of March to set your budget that can be sort of the budget bill could be passed in January so we're not really knowing that information then and then that's a two months period so to go through that really important work about how would you setting that and doing it in a collaborative way in that very short timescale is quite a challenging ask I think particularly when it's going to be a very short time scale. We've had I think a lot of government ten years of very difficult decisions to make and I think that's probably likely to be the challenge moving forward as well. Just in terms of those tensions that Ring Fencing obviously creates for local authorities how would you seek to try and resolve that would it be tough less directed spending? Absolutely I think that's something that we know we're really keen to work with the Government on and I think that's part of an on-going discussion that's happening just now absolutely the more that we can do to move towards that sort of more outcome focus. In terms of how spending, I move away from some of that direction is going to be really important. I would simply hate that we would want to move towards an increasingly outcome focused relationship with local government. There is already a big focus on shared outcomes through the national performance framework but we would like to have that outcomes focus with less ring fencing. So we're confident that the outcomes will be delivered and we don't have to have all of the ring fenced pots and we are in active dialogue with local government colleagues around the so-described new deal with local government which the Scottish Government has referred to together with a fiscal framework. These issues are very much to the fore in that work. Just to find a very briefly, could you just get a reflection on the current financial position and the impact that that might have on delivering the actions for the second delivery plan on meeting child poverty, particularly in areas for example and employability, how there is obviously a real terms coming through. The financial situation is exceedingly grave. The committee will be well aware of the Deputy First Minister's statement in the emergency budget review just a few days ago. You'll be aware of the measures that were taken to get money into people's hands effectively. That includes the expansion of the Scottish child payment, the doubling of the final bridging payment in December, the extra money put into fuel and security funding. So really a raft of measures designed to respond to the cost of living crisis now were given great priority. But at the same time very difficult decisions have had to be taken to save money partly also in light of the understandable additional pay pressures that have been faced amounting to some £700 million in total this financial year. That has meant that in particular some of our ambitions around additional spend on employability cannot be taken forward at this point. That is something that we are working on very closely with partners in the child poverty programme board. There is still significant investment in employability and we need to really max that out to the benefit of the priority families. I mean we're coming towards a close. I mean just on that last point Mr Johnson I mean I know that you've said earlier on that you think that the data is in place to inform the second phase of the plan but it's worth reflecting isn't it that the key messages of this report are quite critical about the key message number one the Scottish Government has not yet demonstrated a clear shift to preventing child poverty. Key message two is 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 report goes on to site Bill Scott talking about that there not been a link between spending decisions and outcomes and targets being met. So I think that's one of the reasons why we as a public audit committee are keen to keep an eye a scrutiny over this and I think why the Auditor General and the Accounts Commission want to keep this under their watchful eye as well and produce further reports on that. So I don't know whether Auditor General you want to say a word about that before I come to the final question I've got. Thanks very much convener you're right and I think we confirmed when we briefed the committee. Is our intention to do further work on the progress that Scotland is making to reduce child poverty. Quite clearly this isn't going to be solved by any one organisation, the Scottish Government, local government partners and the third sector and others all have a really clear role to play. I've struck actually, there are so many organisations that are relevant to delivering child poverty reduction in Scotland but the central component of that and the Government's plans and its child poverty reduction, the second plan will be key to that. So it's our intention to track the progress implementation of the recommendations that we make in this briefing paper and carry out further work on progress towards the targets and the impact of public spending, the very significant sums of public spending that are still being made quite rightly to reduce child poverty in Scotland. We will report publicly to the committee over the course and we anticipate over the next 18 months or so. We started out this morning talking about the human face of child poverty in Scotland today and what's happening. I just want to go around the table to ask for your reflections on the things that we've been discussing this morning but also on this point that's made in the report. It's an analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies which estimates that by October 2022 the inflation rate faced by the least affluent 10 per cent of households could be as much as 75 per cent higher than the inflation rate faced by the top decile of the most affluent households. So the challenges that we've been discussing this morning are going to be accelerated and made even tougher by that factual assessment of what's going on out there, the discriminatory nature of the cost of living crisis and who's been penalised the most. I'll go around the table beginning perhaps with Bruce, if you've got any reflections on that, what you are seeing that that is meaning out there but also if you've got any final points that you want to raise looking back on the session that we've had this morning. As I said, poverty was the biggest human rights issue five and a half years ago when I started and what I'm seeing and hearing from children and young people is really terrifying and it's getting worse and we have to change our response to it. Children talk about the fact that their childhood is being stolen, it is that serious, it's a right to survival and development issue, it's that serious in Scotland right now and we have to change our approach to it. A few years ago on the 30th anniversary of the convention on the rights of the child we asked children across Scotland to come up with seven word stories, it's a lovely way of trying to come up with a creative way but also to encourage people to be brief which I'm not very good at. But they came up with things like, my rights are my armour to me, this idea that rights help protects and that it's our obligation to make sure that the children are protected by rights. They said things like, rights are help before you even ask and I think that's a really important one, this idea that actually the obligation is on all of us in power to actually put in place the protection from poverty isn't something you should be kind of asking for, this isn't an act of charity, this isn't obligation on the state and on all of us that exercise power to address that. The last seven word story that I'd share is freedom from poverty helps all children flourish and I think that's what we're really talking about is making sure that we use all of the power that we have to the maximum extent possible using these resources to create an environment that allows children to flourish because the failure to do that is absolutely catastrophic and it's getting worse. You're all aware of all the stories that we're hearing every day but it's absolutely terrifying at the moment where we're talking about malnourishment in young babies because parents and carers are watering down formula or mothers can't breastfeed properly, all of the examples of children losing their childhoods because they're not able to engage properly and that is a political decision and it's a political failure and we need radical action. Absolutely, I think that it's been a very important session and I think that particularly the testimonies that I think have come from colleagues are absolutely harrowing and I think that it's something which is why this continues to be such a priority for local government in terms of what we can do more of. I think that at a minor point and perhaps a bit of a sideways but to look at obviously the inflation costs as well as being really difficult for households and we understand that they also have that real challenge for public services as well and we're seeing in local government the in-year pressures that we're getting in terms of any of those. The energy costs, food costs, the deliver services to children but also the pay costs which we're obviously absolutely need to be met but that is going to lead to some really challenging decisions made in the year but also going forward we're going to have this problem for a while so it's going to really mean some very challenging decisions made to services many of which support the children that we're talking about today and how we manage that is going to be really difficult and really important. You talk about inflation pressures and we're in the audit committee and we're talking about budgets. The best experts of budgeting are families living in poverty, everything down to the last penny so when anything above inflation that really cuts them and we haven't mentioned also there's a poverty is expensive ironically, there's a poverty premium and I think the latest studies by Bristol University said that costs for Scotland. Scottish families is like £242 million and for the UK it's £2.8 billion and that's because families living in poverty have prepayment metres, can't get access to low credit, can't buy bulk food, can't buy one-off quality items, they have to buy multiple items that are less quality and actually cost more money. So getting back, I'm angry, the parents are angry, one of the mums that I asked what should we say to the politicians here and I'll just leave you with this they said why don't politicians live in our shoes for a while and see what we have to put up with and I bet you things would change then. I suppose just a few points that haven't come up when we're talking about the cost of living, it's important to remember the distinction between urban and rural families as well. Quite often the measures we use to understand poverty hides the cost of living because they're more income based so those that live in very rural areas and have very higher heating costs, higher transport costs, higher childcare costs, we need to make sure we don't lose that. I suppose more generally what we're likely to see in terms of those working locally to address child poverty is by necessity a focus on crisis and getting money into people's pockets and food into people's mouths and I think that's unavoidable and an absolutely essential role for local government and national government too. I suppose it's how do we keep the focus on long term prevention when the human suffering is so great now but I think it's something we have to keep challenging ourselves to do and also just to break down a wee bit the distinction between, and some people have already talked about this, what's mitigation and what's prevention. We need to use every interaction that we have with families whether they're in a crisis situation or not to help tackle poverty in the longer term so not a question of just giving someone a payment or just giving someone a food voucher, making sure there's support and advice and help to find employment or childcare or mental health support as part of that offer so continuing to be holistic in our crisis response. Bill? I very much agree with everything that's been said. I work with a lot of these people on a regular basis and I know the dedication that's there to try and affect things. I am extremely worried like Bruce about what's going to happen over this winter. I think what the Scottish Government has done in managing to protect the Scottish child payment funding, the increase to £25, is extremely important, the bridging payment being doubled is extremely important, the fuel and security fund extremely important because I think it will save lives. That's how desperate things are for those families at the moment. They have not got enough to live on, they cannot eat their homes, they cannot feed themselves. Trusseltrust and the other food banks are moving to providing people with food that they do not need to eat because they know that families have stopped using their cookers because they can't afford to run them. The National Institute for Economic and Social Research estimates that there are now 1.5 million households, that's over 3 million people in the UK, who simply cannot afford their fuel and food costs on a weekly basis. Not intermittently, every single week they have not enough money to meet those two basic essentials. What that means is that families are not living in destitution intermittently, they are living in it constantly. That has a huge impact on their health and their mental health. To concentrate, I appreciate the extremely difficult choices that the Scottish Government has had to make. It's not just the cut to employability spending that worries the commission because that was aimed to achieve structural change. It's also the cut to mental health funding because mental health costs the Scottish economy £8.8 billion a year. That's the scale of the impact on people's lives but also on our economy. Those are difficult choices. I understand the fiscal difficulties that the Scottish Government has had. For every choice that is made, there are consequences and we need to begin poverty proofing every single thing that we do. Instead of thinking of it as something separate that happens to a few people, we need to place it at the heart of all the financial planning that the Scottish Government undertakes. Is not it the case that, in response to all that we have heard, we should be held to account for the progress that we make? I reiterate that I welcome the scrutiny and challenge from the Accounts Commission and the Auditor General for Scotland on this and from this committee. I sat down last week hosted by one parent family Scotland with a group of mothers currently experiencing poverty. Their stories resonate with many of the stories that we've heard today but let me finish with two hopeful points that I also took from those discussions. The first was the fact that with unemployment at historically low levels, some of those who I was speaking to have been successful in securing work. The challenge is for that work to be increasingly flexible so that it fits with childcare responsibilities and for the transport and childcare offer to fit around it. I think we're making some progress there with more to be done. The second area of hope was around the Scottish child payment, the fact that for parents now recognising that really with effect from next week we're looking at that £25 per payment per child if they are eligible for it and many are. I think that one of the things that we can all do is make sure that the availability of that payment is made as widely known as possible and we're supporting all parents who are eligible for it to get it along with the other payments that are available at the moment, as Bill has mentioned. John Dickie, John. Bruce said that the levels of unacceptable levels of child poverty existed pre-Covid, pre-cost to living crisis. Having tolerated the level of poverty in our country left our children so brutally exposed to those crises. As one parent, recently a GRF event described it as not a cost of living crisis, it's a cost of surviving crisis for them. They're not living, they're surviving. We know that families with children on average spend 30 per cent more on energy than other households. We know from Modelling by Resolution Foundation that it's children who are more likely to be getting pushed into poverty. We know that, even with the energy price guarantee, a family of four needs to find an additional £1400 this winter in order to stay warm and fed. That's not there. We know that, when we respond to crisis, we need to do it in a rights-based and a cash-first way. That's what works. That's what the feedback through Covid was about ensuring that families have cash in their pocket, have the agency to make the choices, make the judgments calls, is it the energy bill, is it food, is it a new pair of shoes for the children, that's the response. It's that approach, those principles that need to be applied both in a crisis but also need to underpin the long-term action that's needed to deliver on the child poverty ambitions that I think we all share in this room. Many thanks, convener. I'm very grateful to the committee for organising this session. I found the testimony of colleagues hugely insightful to restate, or at Scotland, myself and the council commission have a long-term interest on the progress that Scotland is making in tackling child poverty, and we'll continue that programme of work to see the impact, better outcomes for Scotland's children. On behalf of the committee, can I thank all of the witnesses for your time and your very rich contributions talking about poverty. It's brought out some very strong messages not just for us as a public audit committee but for us as a Scottish Parliament about the urgency of what needs to be tackled and the transformative changes that we need to see. Thank you very much indeed and I now want to move the committee meeting into private session.