Scottish Secretary pledges to take action on poverty

Scottish Secretary Ian Murray spoke at the launch of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's (JRF) annual report into poverty in Scotland this week [7 October].

The report, summarised here, found that one million people in Scotland are living in poverty and that one in four of them are children. Recommendations were made to overhaul the social security system to tackle the problem and, in particular, for the UK and Scottish Governments to work together to make the process smoother in terms of reserved and devolved policy areas.

An excerpt follows from the remarks made by the Scottish Secretary at the event: 

I want to outline some of the steps that the new UK Government is taking to reduce poverty in Scotland and across the whole of the UK.

We are committed to working together with the Scottish Government, and to reset the relationship between our two governments. Because, as this latest report highlights, it is vital that we can deliver on behalf of the people of Scotland.

I've spent a lot of time with organisations such as Poverty Alliance to understand fully the complexities of what's happening. 

Having one million people in poverty - a quarter of those children - is really sobering. But I think the most sobering thing is that none of us are surprised, and that really should be the thing that we need to tackle in terms of policy.

We are only 95 days into this new government and we've already done a lot of engagement to make sure we can develop these policies, whether it be in social security or regarding the underlying parts of poverty. 

With the Budget coming up on 30 October, the Chancellor has been clear on two things. One is the economic inheritance that we've got to try and deal with and that those with the broadest shoulders will carry the majority of what needs to be done to grow the economy for all parts of our country.

Reducing poverty across all sections of society, particularly child poverty, is in our DNA. We did it before. Unfortunately, we're going to have to do it again. 

We will be publishing our Employment Rights Bill this week to fundamentally transform work and pay. It will ban exploitative zero-hour contracts, outlaw fire and rehire and will make sure that the National Minimum Wage becomes a genuine living wage.

It's still sobering that two-thirds of children in poverty are in households where one or both adults are working full time, and that means that there's a big problem with pay. We hope that our New Deal for Working People will start to resolve some of those issues.

I think it's also important to highlight our Universal Credit review, which will look at everything from the two-child cap to housing allowances.

We've also launched our Child Poverty Task Force, chaired jointly by the Secretaries of State for Education and the Department of Work and Pensions. It looks at all the other big issues that are around in terms of poverty.

Yes, it's about the social security system, Universal Credit, but it's also about housing, educational attainment, health inequalities, pay in the workplace, progression and skills. It's about those underlying causes of poverty that are inherent in our society that we need to find a way to resolve once and for all.

Having grown up on a council estate, I know that having that security of tenure of a house was the bedrock in which the family was built, and without that it's difficult to see how you can get yourself out of poverty.

Housing is devolved, but both governments are working very closely together to make sure that we can resolve the housing emergency that's been declared across a lot of our local authorities. 

We've made a good start over the last 95 days. There will be bumps in the road, because these are fundamental challenges, but the whole culture of the new government is to try and resolve these issues. 

We want to make sure the system can work better, and joint working is really important in this area. There's no reason why Social Security Scotland and the DWP can't work jointly in terms of the delivery of social security, to make sure that we get the best out of both systems for the benefit of everyone who needs to access that system. 

Regarding the low update of benefits by ethnic minorities, I think that's a huge challenge for us. Not just finding those individuals and families, but actually being able to engage with them and get them what they deserve to be claiming. That's a huge battle for us all to try to work together and resolve.

We've got four big priorities as a new government and as a Scotland Office. Growth is the number one priority, but that also feeds into our green agenda, which is our second priority. Our third one is Brand Scotland to try and increase our exports, to improve our businesses and create more jobs. And the fourth one, which attached the first three, is the eradication of poverty.

That's something that myself and Ministerial colleague Kirsty McNeill are fundamentally committed to doing. We can only do that by all of us - devolved governments, the UK Government and organisations like JRF working together. We must find ways we can not only make the system better, but make sure that those who require access to the system, get access to that system and get the funds and support they deserve.

There's a huge amount of work to be done and this report gives us that very sobering starting point.