Debate contribution: Child Poverty

Debate contribution by Mr Matthew O'Toole on 15 April 2024.

MLA

Mr Matthew O'Toole

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

15 April 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Child Poverty

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4482542

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I beg to move

Today's motion should be seen in conjunction with our motions for tomorrow. The SDLP has tabled a series of motions for today and tomorrow that are designed to get to the root of the scandal of the poverty that afflicts our society. We believe that, 25 years after the Good Friday Agreement, we have a moral obligation to finally tackle the stubbornly high levels of deprivation and poverty that exist in Northern Ireland and that are among the highest in these islands, blighting lives, ruining aspiration and, ultimately, putting longer-term pressure on other services. Over the past number of years, sharply increased inflation has combined with a decade and a half of immoral Tory austerity to create real need and suffering not just among the most destitute but in working households. One in five children is living in relative poverty; nearly one in 10 households is struggling to afford basic goods; nearly 300 people in Northern Ireland are dying in cold homes; and we are in the midst of a housing crisis. This place — the Assembly — is not powerless to help. The SDLP Opposition is proposing a series of practical steps that we hope that the Executive parties will sign up to and that can be implemented through the rest of the mandate. We have, in the past, through welfare mitigations, proven that the devolved Assembly is able to take steps in order to alleviate poverty and mitigate the very worst of austerity. All that we are asking is that we do more of that and, indeed, go further. Our motion on child poverty should also be seen as intimately linked to tomorrow's first motion in Opposition day business. That motion is on the removal of the pernicious and unjustifiable two-child limit in universal credit, which the UK Government introduced nearly a decade ago. We believe, as do most expert advisers, academics and campaign groups, that that removal will be the fastest and most effective way of getting rid of child poverty. We will also bring forward motions on eradicating fuel poverty and ending no-fault evictions in housing. Today's motion on child poverty is the start of that work. What does our motion say? First, it expresses "profound regret" at the recent Northern Ireland Audit Office (NIAO) report, which was published a number of weeks ago, that is full of "shocking" findings on the stubbornly high levels of child poverty in our society. That report was an indictment, in a sense, of all of us. It shows that not only have we failed to properly address child poverty but, in many ways, we have allowed the problem to grow worse. As I said, one in five children in the North is living in relative poverty, and nearly one in 10 is in absolute poverty.

Clearly, they are different statistical measures. One relates to the level of average household income. There is a difference. I am not going to spend all my remaining minutes explaining that, although I am sure I would like to get into a policy-wonkish debate about it, but there is a difference. People who are in absolute poverty are in a more desperate situation than people who are living in relative poverty. However, that does not mean that we should not have rigorous and robust policy interventions to address relative poverty. All the indications are that those who are living in relative poverty are more likely to fall into absolute poverty and, indeed, are more likely to avail themselves of other services and cost the taxpayer more down the line. The Audit Office report that I referred to also highlights how economically challenging child poverty is for Northern Ireland in the long term. It is not only an immediate moral challenge but it creates longer-term costs for other public services. We know that it imposes greater costs on the education service, the health service and sometimes, tragically, further down the line, the criminal justice system and social services. We do not believe that we can be relaxed about that situation or leave it to sit as it is, so our motion calls for a binding target to reduce child poverty by the end of the mandate, and we ask the Minister for Communities to come forward with a plan for how he proposes to deliver that reduction. I acknowledge that that plan will need to be cross-cutting and cross-departmental. Although it is the Minister for Communities who will respond to today's debate, it is important to acknowledge that the issue is, fundamentally and inescapably, entirely cross-cutting and cross-departmental. I do not want the debate to be about me or others simply saying that the Minister for Communities is, by himself, responsible for alleviating child poverty, although his Department is, clearly, primarily responsible for the welfare interventions that we are calling for. Our position is that we need what we and campaign groups have been calling for for a number of years: an updated, public child poverty strategy to deal with the real challenges that we face. At the heart of that plan should be binding targets — publicly available and reportable, so that the public can see how well the Executive are doing on delivery — for the reduction of child poverty by the end of the mandate. We are asking not for poverty to be entirely eradicated by the end of the mandate — that would not be a reasonable or constructive suggestion — but for a measurable reduction. We propose that there should be specific interventions, the one that we think to be most important being the subject of tomorrow's motion, the removal of the two-child limit. We think that that is a practical suggestion. We acknowledge that there is a cost, but we think that it is affordable, and we have suggested ways in which we think that it could be paid for. Specifically in relation to today's motion, our view is that there should be a binding target for child poverty reduction in this mandate. We also think that the Minister of Finance should work with the Minister for Communities and other colleagues to agree a ring-fenced budget to deliver on those targets. That is reasonable and constructive, and it is urgent. We acknowledge that there are elements of the amendment in the name of Alliance Party Members that we agree with. In part of the amendment is the sense that a child poverty strategy needs to be part of a broader anti-poverty strategy. I do not disagree with that, and nothing in our motion contradicts or undermines that. However, we challenge the amendment — I say this in a constructive and mature way — in that it appears to remove two things, the first of which is the commitment that the Communities Minister report to the Assembly by September this year. We do not think that that is an unreasonable timeline. We think that, as an Opposition, part of our job is to ask not just for aspirations but for targets, timelines and dates, so we do not support the removal of that date. Secondly, the amendment removes the requirement of a specific, ring-fenced budget for child poverty alleviation. It is important, given our experience of what happens to budgets in some other areas when ring fences are removed, that there be a specific, ring-fenced budget. A large part of that ring-fenced budget will go on what I discussed earlier: the removal via mitigation of the disastrous two-child cap on universal credit. We will wait to hear the arguments for the amendment, but we are relatively sceptical of it, not because we think that it has been cynically tabled or that it attempts to negate our motion; rather, it removes some of the force of our motion, particularly on timelines and specificity of budgets. In the course of the next day, we will have lots of opportunities to debate poverty. We think that, 25 years on from the Good Friday Agreement, it is unacceptable that our poverty levels, especially our child poverty levels, remain as stubbornly high as they are. We think that we can do better. We acknowledge that all parties in the Chamber are broadly committed to the work of alleviating poverty, but we say that now is the time for the new Executive to put their mind to properly dealing with the issues and to implementing the recommendations not only of campaign groups but of some of the report of the independent panel on welfare mitigations to the previous Communities Minister. Indeed, the panel was at work when you had your spell as Communities Minister, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. It is time to get on with it and deliver for the most vulnerable in our society and for working families. In proposing today's motion, and the other motions tomorrow, we commend the motions to the Assembly, and we ask that we all get serious and show a commitment to alleviating poverty.

1,498 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:56 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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