Debate contribution: Child Poverty

Debate contribution by Mr Mark Durkan on 14 October 2025.

MLA

Mr Mark Durkan

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

14 October 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Opposition Business

Heading

Child Poverty

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5180671

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I beg to move

Poverty: the word itself is stigmatised. We other it. It is an issue that affects other eras, other places and other families, but poverty means not being able to afford the basics: food, heating and housing. Child poverty is no longer distant or abstract; it is on our doorstep. It is a lived reality, which steals the innocence of childhood across the North. There was a time, not so long ago, when Christmas appeals were for children in far-off and war-torn countries. Now, those same appeals are for children who live in our communities. They are the children of the nurse who tended our loved ones or the shopworker who stocks the shelves that we all depend on. They are the families now struggling to tell their children that Santa will not be coming this year, but, sure, the tooth fairy stopped coming long ago. The new shoes have not materialised, and some do not know when the next hot, nutritious meal will appear either. One in three children grows up here in food insecurity; one in five children lives in relative poverty, and one in four lives in absolute poverty. Those statistics have been cited repeatedly in the Chamber, but have failed to provoke the level of shame, never mind the level of action, that they deserve. I have persistently raised the plight of children who live in temporary or emergency accommodation. In 2025, children across the North are living without the basic dignity and security that every child deserves. The Assembly made a promise in the New Decade, New Approach agreement back in 2020, to produce an anti-poverty strategy and a child poverty strategy. We were told that one strategy could cover both areas, provided that child poverty was placed front and centre. Yet here we are, five years later, and what do we have? A draft anti-poverty strategy, backed by the Executive, that is toothless and targetless. It has no budget, no timeline and no new policies. It is not a road map; it is a press release. Let us not forget that the strategy did not come out of leadership and certainly did not come out of compassion. It appeared because the courts forced the Executive's hand. The Executive were found to be in breach of their legal duty to produce an anti-poverty strategy. Our constituents tell us the same thing: they feel the impact of poverty every single day. Families are stretched to breaking point. Parents are going without food so that their children can eat. Young people are unable to find a home because of sky-high rents and a lack of social housing. It is shameful that, in 2025, in this corner of the world, in the sixth-largest economy in the world, we have normalised the struggle to survive. The Children's Commissioner has warned that the current draft strategy is not fit for purpose. It has abandoned a life-cycle approach and has lost focus on children altogether. The Audit Office was crystal clear in its report:

"An integrated, cross-departmental anti-poverty strategy is urgently needed"

with measurable targets, defined accountability and fully costed actions. None of those recommendations was taken on board. The PAC said that old strategies failed because they had no ring-fenced funding, no ownership and no deadlines. In other words, they failed because the leadership parties failed to prioritise them. If data alone does not motivate us, let the human stories do so. One parent said simply:

"It all makes me very sad. I don't see any change for me and my situation".

That is a sentence that should haunt every one of us in the Chamber. This strategy will not deliver. It is a rehash of what has already been implemented: it is nothing new and nothing ambitious. The largest driver of child poverty on these islands is the two-child limit. Let us call it what it is: a state-sanctioned punishment for larger families. It is a punishment that is felt hardest by single-parent households and especially by women. The impact of the two-child limit in the North is severe and disproportionate due to the prevalence of larger families here. One in every 10 children is affected, and nearly 50,000 children are growing up in families who have been denied support for at least one child because of that cruel cap. Research from the Trussell Trust tells us that abolishing the two-child limit could lift 18,500 people in Northern Ireland out of severe hardship by 2026. Not only that, but it could have a wider economic and fiscal benefit of £155 million every year. The Scottish Government have effectively abolished that callous policy by mitigating it. We were promised the same protections. Last year, the SDLP Opposition tabled a motion to scrap the two-child limit. We did not just make noise: we provided a plan and costings, but Executive parties watered it down. They supported an amendment to introduce a larger-families payment instead, which had previously been recommended by the independent welfare advisory panel. We could live with that, but, 18 months later, that is yet another promise that has been quietly buried, out of sight and out of mind. In July 2025, when I asked the Minister for Communities about it, his response was, "I have no update". The only reference that we have seen to the two-child rule since is a single line in the draft anti-poverty strategy saying that research will be carried out. Again, I asked the Minister, "What research has your Department done?", and I received a one-line answer, which was basically that no research has been conducted. That is not just complacency; it is contempt. It is contempt for the evidence and the expert advice, and it is contempt for the families who are living that reality every day. The Opposition are serious about abolishing child poverty, so we stand here today not just to criticise but to propose another solution. The Scottish child payment, which was introduced in 2021, now pays £27·15 a week per child to families on low incomes. An evaluation of the payment found that it lifted children out of poverty, reduced debt and lessened material deprivation. The child poverty rate would have been four percentage points higher had the child payment not been introduced. That is real progress and is the model that we should be looking at and following.

I wonder whether the Minister's Department has done the research yet that could inform me to help inform him. Extensive research has been done by experts in the sector that has looked at the cost and at the benefit. We know the cost of not introducing a child payment, however, and people feel it very single day.

I am sorry, but I have to get through my remarks, Minister. I will give way again if I have time at the end. We accept that success will also depend on wider structural reform, and that means having a comprehensive childcare strategy. Childcare in Northern Ireland is among the most expensive on these islands, yet, for families on low incomes, support is riddled with complexity and examples of exclusion. Last year, 130,000 children were living in food-insecure households, which is 20,000 more than the year before. That is not just a statistic but the sound of alarm bells. Expanding access to free school meals is one of the simplest and most effective actions that we can take. Free school meals not just fill tummies but improve health, reduce stigma and boost educational outcomes, yet while the UK Government are expanding provision to all families on universal credit, children in Northern Ireland are being left behind. This year, when the cost of food is higher that ever, there were 6,000 fewer successful applications for free school meals than there were in 2022-23, owing to a reduced income threshold that unfairly locks families out of receiving vital support. The Minister and his party may boast about a £300 increase in the income threshold for eligibility, but that increase came about only after it had been reduced by £1,000. It is therefore a token gesture that is woefully out of touch with reality. On the ground, it is groups such as the Cliff Edge Coalition, the Anti-Poverty Network, St Vincent de Paul and, in my constituency, the Focus Project —

— that are picking up the pieces.

1,396 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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