Hansard

I am grateful that Parliament is debating child tax credit cuts, although I am dismayed that such a debate is necessary and that such a law has been made by the United Kingdom Parliament, through Conservative votes and backing.

The Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016, which limits entitlement to the child element of child tax credit and universal credit to a maximum of two children as from the 6th of this month, is the latest in an onslaught—I use that word deliberately—of UK legislation that has negatively impacted on women and children.

Ruth Davidson, in a desperate defence of the indefensible, asks that we look at welfare reform in the round—let us do that. Engender tells us that 86 per cent of the £26 billion of cuts that will have been implemented between 2010 and 2020 will have been made to women’s incomes. That is the context in which we debate today—and we were some way from gender equality before severely gendered austerity was inflicted upon us.

In its analysis, the Resolution Foundation concludes that the

“Poorest third of households will be worse off from tax and benefit changes starting”

from 6 April, “despite a £1bn giveaway”. That giveaway from the public purse sees

“the better-off half of households receiving 80 per cent of the tax cut windfall, and the poorest third of households shouldering two-thirds (67 per cent) of the benefit losses”.

The Resolution Foundation also tells us that

“the overall package of reforms add up to a significant transfer from low and middle income households to richer ones.”

Matthew Reed, the chief executive of the Children’s Society, said:

“The announcement to limit child tax credits to two children is effectively a two child policy for the poorest families.”

The Equality and Human Rights Commission in its letter to the DWP said that:

“There was no evidence provided to support DWP’s assumption that the measures will incentivise families to only have two children if they cannot afford to have more.”

As we have heard, the policy takes no account of the fact that families’ situations change—jobs are lost, family members become unwell and require care, many parents are required to work part-time so that they can also care for an older relative.

The fact is that the child tax credit limit, along with the overall cap on welfare benefits, fundamentally distorts our means-tested social security system, which is a system based on assessing peoples’ needs and their ability to meet them. What the child tax credit limit means is that family need will be assessed, and even when it is concluded that a family requires additional support, that will be withheld.

The Children and Young People’s Commissioner for Scotland is right when he says that, when it comes to new benefit cuts,

“For the UK Government, some children appear to matter more than others”.

It is no surprise that he has raised concerns regarding the rights of children affected by benefit cuts with the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. Needs will not disappear simply because Westminster has legislated.

We have heard that there are several exceptions to the two child limit, including when there is a multiple birth and in cases of adoption, but let us look at the clause that we have discussed today in most detail. I have no way of knowing whether the person who first thought of that exemption, now known as the rape clause, felt that it was a compassionate one. However, when they got to the stage of asking women to prove that a child on behalf of whom they are claiming is a result of rape—a single brutal attack perhaps—or was conceived during an abusive, coercive and controlling relationship, surely they would have come to the conclusion that the implications of the legislation and its impact on the wellbeing and privacy of women and children were completely unacceptable?

For many women, it will be personally difficult and traumatic to complete that form. It will also be practically difficult, if not impossible, because Scottish Women’s Aid and Rape Crisis Scotland whole-heartedly oppose the limit and the exception, and they cannot and will not collude by acting as third-party reporters for the DWP. The Royal College of Nursing tells us that they were not approached by the DWP in advance of its consultation on the exception, and that they

“do not believe it is appropriate for a nurse or a midwife to arbitrate whether a child is likely to have been conceived as a result of rape.”

A requirement of the entitlement to tax credit for the child conceived as a result of rape is that the claimant is not living with the perpetrator, so those women who are unable to leave a coercive and abusive relationship but have conceived as a result of rape will have the same pressing financial need to support a third child, or more, but will not have the means to meet the requirements of that abhorrent clause. That wrong policy makes life even harder for those women.

We know from the low reporting rates for rape that many women do not wish to disclose the information. I am wholly supportive of efforts to encourage the reporting of sexual assault and rape, but we know that many women are reluctant to take that step, and we know why. There is so much work yet to be done on that front, and yet we expect women to fill in detailed forms for the DWP.

In their briefing, Scottish Women’s Aid and Rape Crisis Scotland told us:

“We are in no doubt that this policy will inflict harm on rape survivors, by removing their control over whom and when they speak about their experience. This control is known to be a critical element in a woman’s recovery from rape, removing this control risks re-traumatising women.”

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has written to the DWP explaining its concerns regarding the cap and the operation of the exemption. With regard to the cap, the commission pointed out that children have a right to adequate living standards, and that those are international rights owed by the state to the children themselves. Those rights are not dependent on the choices or circumstances of their parents. The commission rightly criticised the DWP for the lack of a properly detailed impact assessment. The on-going cumulative impact of cuts affecting women and children is a scandal and it has to stop.

The Scottish Government has the power to take action to mitigate—to make something bad less severe, as the dictionary would have it—and, of course, it must and will look at ways to ensure that support for those affected is available. However, I campaigned for a Scottish Parliament and joined Scotland Forward before I joined the Scottish Green Party. Ruth Davidson asks what a Scottish Parliament is for. It is not simply to mitigate the policies of the Conservatives at Westminster. My vision of devolution is proactive, with politicians in Scotland working together for the good of people in Scotland. Ruth Davidson, Adam Tomkins and many others appear to have no vision of what this Parliament should be about.

I support the SNP motion and the Labour amendment, and I move amendment S5M-05282.2, to insert after “Pensions”:

“; agrees with Rape Crisis Scotland, Engender and Scottish Women’s Aid’s view that these changes are ethically unjustifiable; believes that women’s rights and equality are integral to developing a social security system in Scotland that is just and fair; condemns the two-child cap as yet another welfare cut that the UK Government knows will hit women hardest”.