SCOTLAND’S Children’s Commissioner has backed calls for the Scottish Government to use new powers to top up child benefit payments to the poorest families.
Tam Baillie’s call comes as the Scottish Government consults on the new social security powers devolved under the Scotland Act 2016, and he said an increase in benefits, recommended by an expert group earlier this year, was necessary to ensure every child had enough food to survive. In June, the Government’s Independent Working Group on Child Poverty urged ministers to use new social security powers coming to Holyrood to fund an increase in child benefit.
The group said an increase of £5 per child per week would lift 30,000 children out of poverty at a cost of £256 million a year.
Baillie said: “We know that almost one in five children in Scotland is living in relative poverty and charities report that a third of people depending on food banks to live are actually children. This can only harm children’s physical and mental well-being; unless their basic need to be well-nourished is met, we cannot expect children to concentrate at school or on other activities.”
The commissioner also highlighted a lack of accurate data about the number of children in Scotland who do not have enough food to eat, as he published a report about children’s views on food insecurity.
He said: “The greatest insight of this research is of young children’s desire and ability to solve the challenges they see in the world around them, which raises a number of questions about the inclusion of children in public policy and decision-making more generally.”
The report was produced jointly with Nourish Scotland and Home Start Scotland and triggered by the rapid increase of food insecurity in Scotland and the absence of children’s input in discussions on the causes and solutions to poverty.
According to the research, conducted with 32 children in four local authority areas in Scotland, young children have well developed ideas around solutions to food insecurity including making healthy food more affordable, redistributing money, and supporting charitable solutions – though not all children felt that food banks were a fair solution, with one child saying: “Living is more important than surviving.”
The Trussell Trust, one of many food bank providers, reported in 2015-16 that it handed out 133,726 three-day food parcels in Scotland, a more than 20-fold increase in three years. The Trust estimates that a third of its parcels go to children.
Baillie said: “The greatest insight of this research is of young children’s desire and ability to solve the challenges they see in the world around them, which raises a number of questions about the inclusion of children in public policy and decision making more generally.”
Pete Ritchie, executive director of Nourish Scotland said a number of the solutions children suggested were rooted in children’s rights and they all agreed that children have a right to food.
“However, we don’t have a clear idea of the scale of the challenge – there is currently no population-wide monitoring of food insecurity in Scotland or the rest of the UK, though the exponential rise of food banks and other emergency food aid providers has highlighted a very real problem,” he added. “The Scottish Government could include a child-specific measure of food insecurity in the Child Poverty Bill.”
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