Official Report: Minutes of Evidence
Committee for the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister, meeting on Wednesday, 21 January 2015
Members present for all or part of the proceedings:
Mr Mike Nesbitt (Chairperson)
Mr Chris Lyttle (Deputy Chairperson)
Mr A Attwood
Ms M Fearon
Mrs B Hale
Ms B McGahan
Mr D McIlveen
Witnesses:
Mr Henry Johnston, The Executive Office
Mrs Janis Scallon, The Executive Office
Mrs Janet Smyth, The Executive Office
Child Poverty: OFMDFM Officials
The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): We are joined by Henry Johnston, Janet Smyth and Janis Scallon. You are all very welcome. Henry, once you are settled, will you give us your opening remarks please?
Mr Henry Johnston (Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister): Thank you for giving us the opportunity to brief you on the draft child poverty strategy 2014-17. As you will be aware, I hope, Margaret Rose McNaughton and Janet were here last January to discuss the approach of the consultation document 'Delivering Social Change for Children and Young People'. They provided the Committee with an interim update in March and came back again in May to brief you on the final findings of the consultation. After recess, my colleagues came back in September to brief you fully on the analysis of the consultation. As such, you will be aware that, following the consultation and some quite negative comments on it, a decision was made to lay a separate child poverty strategy — separated from a revised children's strategy — fully taking on board the comments from the stakeholders.
Since then a new child poverty strategy has been developed, taking on board the comments we received. That Executive strategy sets out not only the actions that Departments plan to take but a new approach to our efforts on tackling child poverty. It uses the child poverty outcomes framework as a tool. The strategy uses outcome-based accountability — I will probably come back to that — which is a positive step for us to allow us to take a more strategic look at both some of the population-level activities that we want to do and some of the programme-level impacts that we hope to achieve. We hope that the strategy will help us to evaluate our work more thoroughly and allow us to report on not just what we have done but how well we did it and the number of people better off as a result.
We have also provided you with a copy of our annual report for 2013-14, which is the third annual report for the previous strategy. You will note from it that the child poverty rates have been falling since 2009-2010. In 2012-13, the most recent figures available, 89,000 or 20% of children were in relative poverty before housing costs. That is six percentage points lower than the 2009-2010 figure of 26%. However, we are not complacent, given our relative position and the recent Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) figure in relation to the projected 2020 figure against the Child Poverty Act target.
Nonetheless, a good lot of work has been undertaken across the Department to mitigate the impact of child poverty. Some of the work that I would like to draw attention to includes the expansion of Sure Start to the top 25% of most deprived wards, up from 20%. The Bright Start childcare strategy was launched in September 2013, and the grant scheme associated with it in March 2014. Some 20 new nurture units are now operational in 20 primary schools across Northern Ireland. People will have noticed that the change fund application was successful in securing the future of those nurture units until March 2016. In its first full year, 9,000 pupils have received support through the Delivering Social Change literacy and numeracy programme. There have already been some positive reports back from that about increased performance among those children who are entitled to free school meals (FSM).
The annual report seeks to capture much of the work. It reports on the strategic priorities and actions of the Executive's child poverty strategy for 2011-14. Because it is late, we have taken the opportunity to update it with some statistics that would not have been available had it been tabled at the due time. Future annual reports, potentially starting with the next one, 2014-15, will use the outcomes based accountability (OBA) methodology to report on not just what we have done — the outputs — but how people are better off as a result — the outcomes. Annual reports will include the most recent data on the indicators, including the measures in the Child Poverty Act 2010, as well as reporting on each of the actions using performance accountability measures to evaluate how well a project, programme or service is performing at the participant level, reporting on how much we did, how well we did it and how people are better off as a result.
Following this meeting, we will be finalising the documents and putting them forward for Executive consideration. We can then begin the implementation of the strategy. We are keen to allow the Committee to consider the document and ask any questions.
Mr Johnston: The reason was the approach of trying to conflate a revised children's strategy with the new strategy. It was felt that the companion piece of that should be in the report. We agreed that we would do a 12-week consultation on that, I think, from January 2014, which meant that we could not achieve the March target for laying the report. Since then, we have revised the approach. Again, we had hoped to get the revised strategy out with the companion piece.
Mr Johnston: In March next, so in two months' time.
Mr Johnston: We will have two reports due. One report will be due in two months' time, yes.
Mr Johnston: We hope to meet that deadline this time, yes.
Mr Johnston: Because it is so late, we did take the opportunity to update the figures in it. Although it is for a previous year, there is a considerable delay in the availability of some of the statistics. In fact, we have since been able to update the report that you have today with further statistics that became available from DSD only late last month, I think.
We are culpable in not putting the report out in due time. We tried to mitigate that delay by ensuring that we have the most up-to-date information possible in the report when it is published.
The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Are there any penalties or sanctions against the Department for late publication, in the same way you might have redress against the Housing Executive if it did not fix your leaky roof until eight months after it said it would?
Mr Johnston: Not that I am aware of.
The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): You said that the figure was 20% and the measure was relative poverty before housing costs. Why did you choose that one?
Mr Johnston: We have a number of figures available. There is absolute poverty and relative poverty. You will see in the report that we did some work comparing our levels of poverty here with other home countries and the overall UK level. The Child Poverty Act requires us, by 2020, to have eliminated poverty, and there is a different figure for eliminating relative poverty and absolute poverty, so it does not mean zero, but it is a very low figure.
The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): As you say, there is a range of relative and absolute poverty measures that you can choose, so I am just wondering again, why did you choose that one?
Mr Johnston: I will pass that one to Janis. She will also mention persistent poverty.
The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Yes, but you did not mention that. You said 20% for relative poverty before housing costs. I am just curious. Did you just pick that one out of thin air?
Mrs Janis Scallon (Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister): No.
Mr Johnston: I just picked that one —
Mrs Scallon: It is the headline measure.
Mr Johnston: It is the headline measure, which is the one most widely used. There is a curiosity in the current figures in that you would normally expect the relative poverty figure to be higher than the absolute poverty figure. At the minute, the absolute poverty figure is higher. Janis did try to explain that to me.
Mrs Scallon: We have four headline measures outlined in the Child Poverty Act. They are relative child poverty and absolute child poverty, both before and after housing costs. There is also a mixed measure and persistent poverty, which we do not have figures for, and the UK does not have figures for. The persistent poverty definition is that you are in poverty for three years out of four, so it requires longitudinal data. The longitudinal data comes from the Understanding Society survey, which has just released year four of data, so only now are we getting to a stage where will get a persistent poverty measure.
Relative and absolute poverty are two different measures. One is relative to the current Northern Ireland equivalised median. The measure that is outlined in the Act is the UK equivalised median: 60% of median income puts you on the poverty line. The absolute measure is based on a median income in 2010-11. Previously, it was the median income for 1998-99, but, as per the Act, we were asked to rebase this to the median incomes for 2010-11. It is then uprated using the consumer price index each year. So, one is poverty in relative terms, and one is poverty in real terms, but all are presented before and after housing costs, as per the Act.
The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Indeed. That is very helpful, because Henry said that he chose it because it was the headline measure, but you have made clear — and I thank you for it — that it is actually not the headline measure but one of four headline measures. So, again, the question is this: why did you choose that one?
Mrs Scallon: Out of those four measures, relative child poverty before housing costs is considered the headline measure.
Mr Johnston: It is the headline. That is the one most commonly —
Mr Johnston: Headline headline, yes.
Mr Johnston: What Janis told you was interesting. I will turn it into money, which people might understand. What relative poverty before housing costs actually means in real terms is £264 a week. Absolute poverty is actually higher at £272 a week, which is the anomaly that I raised. That means that the number of children in absolute poverty in Northern Ireland is actually 22% whereas the number in relative poverty is 20%.
The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Hopefully, this will be the last question on this. You chose the headline of headlines of the four measures. I believe that you said that it was 20%, which is a six percentage point improvement; is that correct?
Mrs Scallon: We have already talked about the relative child poverty measure; 20% of households with children in Northern Ireland are in relative poverty, and that is —
Mrs Scallon: Six percentage points better than it was in 2009-2010.
Mrs Scallon: The next one is the relative child poverty measure after housing costs. It sits at 22% for Northern Ireland, which is six percentage points better than in 2009-2010. That equates to 98,000 children in Northern Ireland. The absolute child poverty before housing costs measure sits at 22% for Northern Ireland, which is two percentage points better than it was in 2009-2010. That equates to 96,000 children. The absolute poverty after housing costs measure for Northern Ireland is 26%, which is the same as it was in 2009-2010 but down two percentage points on last year, 2011-12. That equates to 113,000 children. Our absolute poverty figures are lower than those in the UK.
Mrs Scallon: It has not always been the case.
Mrs Scallon: It has always been the headline measure, but it has not always been the most positive figure.
The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): We also have to factor in — this is on page 166 of your packs, members — that the Institute for Fiscal Studies has made a forecast that levels of child poverty across the UK will increase significantly over the next five to 10 years. Does your strategy have measures to mitigate and handle that?
Mr Johnston: We asked the Institute for Fiscal Studies to do projections for Northern Ireland. We have talked a little bit about that report previously. It was based on certain assumptions that DSD gave us at the time around the implementation of welfare reform. Obviously, those will need to be updated now that there has been agreement in broad terms on welfare reform. We need to have clarity as to what some of the mitigating actions that the Executive will implement will be. It projected, for Northern Ireland by 2020, the relative poverty figure going up to 26% and the absolute poverty rising to 29%. That is against a target in Child Poverty Act of elimination by 2020.
Mr Johnston: That will be a significant challenge for the new strategy. The new strategy looks at two things. It looks at trying to reduce the level of child poverty. Some of that is macroeconomic. Some of it will be down to those changes in welfare reform. The second aspect of it is to mitigate the impact on those children who live in families who are in poverty. That is where there are significantly more levers available to a range of Departments right across the Executive to do something to ensure that the lives of children are not blighted by living in poverty.
Mr Johnston: We got quite a high level of support. Janet can talk a little bit about the engagement that we had, which, again, was facilitated by the National Children's Bureau.
Mrs Janet Smyth (Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister): During the consultation period on the 'Delivering Social Change for Children and Young People' document, which we first went out with last January, the feedback was that an outcomes-focused approach was well welcomed. It allowed us to agree indicators and how we were going to look at achieving overarching outcomes. It helps us to work with delivery partners. It helps us to identify actions that we are going to take. It will help us to be able to look at the work that is being done across the Departments — what Departments are doing, how well they are doing it, and whether it is actually making a difference, which is something that we have not done before. The sector's response was very welcoming of that approach.
The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): You have four high-level outcomes, which are families experience economic well-being; children in poverty learn and achieve; children in poverty are healthy; and children in poverty live in safe, secure and stable environments. Is it easy to get a buy-in from the sector on how you actually achieve that?
Mrs Smyth: We had, and still have, the 10-year strategy for children and young people, which had six outcomes. The feedback from the consultation was that we should be focusing more on poverty issues as opposed to wider children and young people needs. The feedback from the sector was very positive in relation to key issues like children in poverty remain healthy, that they learn and achieve, that they live in safe communities and that they experience economic well-being.
Having this approach also allows us to develop a really good monitoring framework and evaluation framework. The sector will be key to that process. For example, the Child Poverty Alliance will sit on our project board. The Children's Commissioner and other key stakeholders and Departments will also sit on the project board. They will be central to the whole monitoring and evaluating of this strategy. They will be involved in looking to see the work that is coming out of the outcome groups, looking at the report cards that are going to come back, and identifying whether these actions are actually making a difference on the ground. We can all say that we have various targets to meet, and we can tick the boxes to say that we have met a target. However, has it actually made a difference to the children who are in poverty? This is the key difference in the process and methodology that we are using to take this strategy forward. We see it as a very positive approach. The sector sees it as a very positive approach and will be key in working with us on the delivery, evaluation and monitoring of it.
Mr Johnston: There was another thing that I wanted to say about the key first actions. The approach has been welcomed. There was significant debate about elements of it, some of the measures and so on. A range of different people had different views. We think that we have come up with a good approach there.
There is an area that we have agreed to revisit on an annual basis. A lot of these key actions were agreed in advance of the Budget position being known. There was a degree of caution from a number of people, as they did not know how much money they were going to have. We will have an opportunity early in the new financial year, when people are clear as to their budgets, to revise the actions, to ensure that people will deliver on the actions that they have promised they will, and to see whether, now that people are in a better position to understand where their budgets are going, they could include additional actions or increase the volume of some of the actions that they have in there.
The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): I want to ask you about whether other Departments will be involved in the project board. Before I do, Janet, you said something that put a thought in my mind. In this document, we have these four high-level outcomes. As you said, there are six in the children's strategy. I am thinking about Steven Agnew's private Member's Bill about cooperation between Departments. He has based it on the six high-level outcomes. Should it actually be based on those four?
Mrs Smyth: That would be a matter for the children and young people team. We are focusing on children in poverty in our strategy and how we move forward with that.
Mrs Smyth: It would be for our children and young people team to comment on that. I can come back to the Committee on that.
The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): If he is doing it on the children's strategy and saying that there are six high-level outcomes that you have to cooperate on, surely, it would be equally valid to say that Departments such as Education, Health and the rest should cooperate with OFMDFM in delivering these high-level outcomes on poverty.
Mrs Smyth: The high-level outcomes that we have on poverty interline with the outcomes that are in the 10-year strategy for children and young people.
Mrs Smyth: There are two additional ones. One relates to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), and the other to working within communities. With regard to the UNCRC one, which we originally had in our consultation document, it was felt that we should not have identified that as an outcome because the UNCRC and the rights of the child should be overarching in how we work towards making sure that the rights of the child are always considered. So, we took it out of an outcome that we originally had of those six.
Mrs Smyth: Yes. The wording has changed slightly, because the sector felt that they should be more poverty-focused as opposed to being very general in the headings and terminology that was used.
Mrs Smyth: We are focusing this strategy on children specifically in poverty.
The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): I understand, but we are just trying to make sure that we are as effective and efficient as possible as a Government.
On the project board, will you have representatives from the other Departments — Agriculture, Education, Health?
Mrs Smyth: We will. If this is cleared through the Executive, we propose to have representatives from the Departments. You will see from the strategy that we have four proposed outcome groups. These will be initially led by OFMDFM, with key delivery partners and Departments sitting on them. The key Departments in delivering the various outcomes will then sit on the project board to feed back the information coming through from the outcome groups.
Mr Johnston: The other thing to say is that we see this going forward as an element under the overall Delivering Social Change umbrella. So, it will plug into the programme boards, which met this morning, and that, in turn, will plug into the ministerial subcommittee.
Mr Johnston: We have a duty to do that.
The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): The private Member's Bill on the broader piece of cooperation puts an onus on annual reports on cooperation in respect of children and children living in poverty. I just wonder whether we are not being very joined up. Do we really need to segment out all this?
Mr Johnston: We are obliged to produce an annual report.
The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): It is maybe a question for ourselves, as politicians. Are we, once again, process-driven to the extent where we are putting too much effort into process and not enough into outputs and outcomes? Anyway, it is just a question.
Mr Lyttle: The Child Poverty Act 2010 measures child poverty by household income. The strategy therefore says that:
"As such, actions to reduce child poverty must include actions focused on improving the economic well-being of parents, families and households with children."
One of the key first actions in the strategy is to:
"Provide advice for people to ensure they are getting full benefit entitlement, securing at least £30 million in additional benefits for a minimum of 10,000 people over the next three years."
Why then would a key first action not be to provide advice for people to ensure that they are accessing full financial assistance with childcare? I am thinking along the lines of the calls for a full-scale marketing campaign in order to raise awareness of the benefit entitlement and financial assistance available to families for childcare, given the connection between childcare and employment.
Mr Johnston: That will be very helpful when the new tax-free childcare comes in.
Mr Lyttle: So, in the meantime, you are doing nothing.
Mr Johnston: I noticed that there were ads on UTV, paid for by Employers For Childcare, talking about the current voucher scheme.
Mr Lyttle: Sorry, I did not pick you up there. Can you repeat that?
Mr Johnston: On UTV last week or this week, there were ads talking about the current voucher scheme.
Mr Lyttle: So, you are content to let the third sector fund key actions that are comparable to your key actions.
Mr Johnston: That is working in partnership.
Mr Lyttle: It is not. You are not partnered with them in any way in that respect; you are letting them do all the work.
Mr Johnston: No, we did not have —
Mr Johnston: We did not know —
The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Then will you please withdraw your assertion that you worked in partnership with them on this, because it is not true?
Mr Johnston: I am sorry —
Mr Johnston: It is the case that —
Mr Johnston: Not on the ads at all. All I can say in relation to that —
Mr Johnston: Sorry. All I can say in relation to those ads is that we were mailed by Employers For Childcare to let us know about it. That was a general mailing with an attachment of the clip for the ad. That was sent to a range of stakeholders. The last time that we were in front of the Committee in relation to the information about the current voucher scheme we said that we were looking to source additional information from HMRC to allow us to model what the impact of that would be. We had also asked Employers For Childcare whether they would make available to us some additional information, and they have not been able to.
Mr Lyttle: I am not getting into that level of detail with you, Henry, to be honest. I want to try to bring it back to some sort of positive, constructive point of reference. I support the principles that are at play in the strategy and the key actions that say it is a good thing to advise people, raise awareness and give them information about their full benefit entitlement. That is a good thing in the strategy. For that reason, I remain confused as to why the Department has not taken a similar approach to providing some resource to assist people to have full awareness of childcare financial assistance entitlement. Saying that that will be catered for by HMRC towards the end of the year, I think, is really disappointing, given how much assistance people could avail themselves of before then, if they were fully aware. Recent surveys suggest that as many as 50% of parents and families feel that they are not well informed or as informed as they could be, despite the best efforts and excellent work of the likes of Employers For Childcare. I think that OFMDFM could be doing much more. Clearly, it is happy to identify that DSD should be doing the work that relates to benefit entitlement. I raise the issue again that OFMDFM should be doing much more on childcare entitlement.
The other question that I want to ask is for the benefit of not just us but the people who are not familiar with some of the terms. What is an outcomes-based approach?
Mr Johnston: Could I go back to answer the first bit about childcare?
Mr Lyttle: I will be surprised if you do, but go ahead.
Mr Johnston: As I said earlier, it is our intention to revisit the action plan once people are clear what their budgets are. We will need to be much clearer as to how much information would be available from HMRC. The other piece of work on childcare, which we agreed before the Committee to do, was to ascertain, if we could, the number of families who could potentially have benefited more from the voucher scheme. Although those currently in the scheme will be able to continue in the scheme, we have agreed to try to determine the number of families who, if the scheme had been available, would have been better off. That will inform perhaps some of our thinking, together with further information from HMRC on how it is going to promote tax-free childcare. That may be something that we will revisit once we do our first review of the action plan. That might be additional action that we consider, depending on finance and gaps we are returning to.
The outcome-based accountability model is something that we have been trying to run across a number of the Delivering Social Change projects. As with the six signature projects, we are trying to look at two things. The first is to look at the nature of the population problem that we are trying to address. We will try to run a turning-the-curve exercise to determine what, if we keep on doing what we are doing at the minute and things happen as we expect, the nature of the change will be, either positive or negative. If we are not happy with that, we will then look at what we can do to change it. It is a move away, to some extent, from individual targets towards a direction of travel. Instead of saying that we have a figure of 20, next year we want it to be 20·4 and the following year we want it to be 20·8, we try to say what our normal projection is and that we will try to do better and the interventions will be around that.
That is what we will do, how we will prioritise and what we hope to achieve. Once we have determined that, we will be looking at a series of programmes and interventions that might make a difference. Specifically, with each of those interventions, we tried to populate the four quadrants. The first quadrant is about how many we will do. How many people and families will benefit? How many programmes will we run? Something like that — stuff that we would normally count around activity.
The next thing that we will try to do will relate to the outcome of that. In the current Delivering Social Change (DSC) literacy and numeracy programmes, for example, one of the key things that we are trying to change is the number of kids who are on benefit and free school meals who get five or more GCSEs, including maths and English. We are pretty good at counting that.
Mr Lyttle: May I ask a quick supplementary question? You spoke about increasing numbers: are there any indicators for when a specific percentage target is set, or is it just a general target to improve?
Mr Johnston: At population level, it is a general target to improve. With the programmes specifically, it may be more useful to put numbers into some of those.
May I do my other two quadrants?
Mr Johnston: The top quadrant, which is a departure, is about trying to evaluate the effectiveness of the delivery of that intervention. With an education programme, for example, there will be a report from the Education and Training Inspectorate. That is great. We would also want more subjective quality measures, probably based on the survey data of parents, children and other teachers in the school to see what they thought. We would ask children who had gone through that programme what they thought about it. Did you think that that programme was better than doing it in your mainstream classroom setting? We would ask parents whether they had noticed a change in their child's behaviour since they had gone through the programme. We would ask other teachers whether, since a child was taken out of their class and put into these other classes with other teachers teaching other subjects, they had noticed a change when they came back.
The final quadrant, which will inform what we are doing going forward, is to try to look at the relative effectiveness of that intervention compared with others. We did that. We spent money on it and put 5,000 people through it. In the heel of the hunt, 10 people did better. That is great for those 10 people, but are there programmes that we are also looking at that made a difference to 100 people for the same sort of money? As we look ahead, we see that as quite a useful tool in being able to focus in on programmes that do make a significant difference — I think that very few Departments fund programmes that make no difference — for the population who are in benefit of that intervention. That is a very powerful approach as we go forward, but it is critically dependent on getting that information on a timely basis and being able to compare one programme with another. We are also trying to see whether we will be able to compare programmes from different domains, such as the education and health domains, using some common metrics that we think are applicable to both.
Mr Lyttle: I appreciate that information. It is an attempt to move towards a more robust approach to being able to identify the outcomes that are being achieved. Can you give me an idea as to why the targets or indicators are general as opposed to a specific level of improvement on each indicator, so that it is a general increase rather than an increase by x per cent?
Mr Johnston: That is just the approach. Some individual programmes have high-level targets. We are focusing primarily on indicators and that overall direction and are trying to move away from time-bound targets.
Mr Lyttle: I will give a quick example. For the outcome "children in poverty learn and achieve", the indicator is the proportion of school leavers achieving at least five GCSEs at grades A to C or equivalent. What proportion are you aiming for?
Mr Johnston: There is a PFG target for that, whereby we are trying to narrow the gap. So there are other things, which have —
Mr Lyttle: How many indicators are new, and how many are already in the PFG?
Mrs Scallon: Most of the indicators are aligned with PFG targets. The indicators were decided on through a process facilitated by the National Children's Bureau (NCB). We ran through a child poverty outcomes framework, partners were identified, Departments were brought on board and the community and voluntary sector and a number of agencies were brought on board to look at what outcomes were desired for children and what the best indicators would be for direction over time to assess what could be done to move that direction in the right way. The indicators were not chosen arbitrarily by the Department; they were chosen in partnership with a number of Departments, agencies and the community and voluntary sector.
Mrs Smyth: New indicators have been added, based on the consultation and what came back from the DSC for children and young people document. For the outcome "families experience economic well-being", for example, the additional indicator was the proportion of children living in families in which at least one adult is in work and whose income is less than 60% of the median income before housing costs. For the outcome "children in poverty learn and achieve", we added the proportion of pupil enrolments in primary and post-primary schools whose attendance is less than 85%. For the outcome "children in poverty are healthy", we added the number of hospital admissions of those aged 0 to 17 with self-harm diagnoses. Those are examples of additional indicators that we have put in, based on the consultation responses.
Mr Johnston: As Janis said, we were trying to pick up indicators that somebody somewhere was already capturing. OBA also looks at things that you would really like to have but that nobody is capturing. The question is then whether you are prepared to put the cost into capturing some of those things.
Mrs Smyth: That is what is really good about the OBA approach. When we are working with the project board and the outcome groups, and if we feel that additional indicators need to be included, they can be included, and there can be discussion about that. It is not a strategy that sits and is not reviewed; it will be reviewed on an ongoing basis.
Mr Lyttle: That should assist with reporting. From our point of view, actual indicators will hopefully help us to engage with the reporting mechanisms.
Mr Johnston: We are keen to get things that are being captured so we do not have huge lags in reporting.
Mr Lyttle: The work with the NCB has been invaluable. I welcome that and look forward to hearing more about the implementation of the strategy.
Mr Attwood: May we go back to the uptake of childcare vouchers? My understanding is that you will consult HMRC about getting approval for a bespoke scheme for the relevant people for this autumn and that you will look at developing such a scheme by this autumn, when the current scheme closes.
Mr Johnston: I do not think that we made a commitment to do that. The commitment that we made was to try to quantify the number of people who could be disadvantaged. On that basis, Ministers would be in a position to decide whether they wanted to take that scheme forward. I hope that the only commitment that we made when we were here was to try to quantify the size of the potential problem so that we could come to an informed decision.
Since then, we have had communication with Employers for Childcare. It has some information available but is not willing to release it. However, it has suggested that HMRC might have something similar, so that is what we are in the process of trying to determine. If we can work out, theoretically —
Mr Attwood: Let us just take that point. Was the LCM in October last year?
Mr Attwood: It is now three months after an LCM and nine months from when we might have had a bespoke scheme. What conversations have you had with HMRC about data that it might have about the number of people who might be the beneficiaries of a bespoke scheme in Northern Ireland?
Mr Johnston: We can provide you with details. I did not mean that I personally had had those conversations; my team has had conversations with HMRC.
Mr Attwood: Do you have the information, or is it all somewhere between here and London?
Mr Johnston: HMRC will have some of it, and it will not have some of it. The sort of information you need to ascertain is —
Mr Attwood: Have you had any such information from HMRC in the last three months?
Mr Johnston: I do not believe that we have had the additional information. I think that, until some two weeks ago, we had hoped that Employers for Childcare would have been able to provide us with some additional information. We needed to know the names and numbers of —
Mr Attwood: Whatever about Employers for Childcare, are you now able to confirm today — three months after an LCM and nine months from when we might have had a bespoke scheme — that you have had any information from HMRC?
Mr Johnston: I will need to come back to you when I find out how much targeted information —
Mr Johnston: May I finish on that? We have information from HMRC, but it is not just general information that we need. We need family-specific information from HMRC to determine whether a particular family — we have done a few worked examples, which I think we shared with the Committee when we were here last time — would fall into the category of people who would be better off under the voucher scheme, with the caveat that their employer offered the voucher scheme, as opposed to tax-free childcare, which is dependent on the individual rather than the employer.
Mr Attwood: No one disputes the fact that there is a category of person who, on the far side of the closure of the current scheme, will be in a position of disadvantage compared with the continuation of the scheme. Given that you have accepted that principle, have you done any bespoke work since the autumn in developing a scheme for those people, whatever the numbers might be?
Mr Johnston: No, we have not.
Mr Attwood: So here we are, nine months from the end of one scheme, when the Committee made it very clear to you what the issues might be about a dedicated scheme, and no work has been done.
Mr Johnston: No work has been done in developing a scheme. What we agreed to do was to develop an analysis that would define the potential need for the scheme.
Mr Attwood: It was always my view that, whatever the numbers and whatever could be done in quantifying all that, it had to be done in parallel with the development of a bespoke scheme, or we would be in the situation that we are now in, when we are running out of time very quickly.
To be fair to Henry Johnston, what the junior Minister said on the day of the LCM was curious. He was asked these questions before the Assembly broke for Question Time, and, when he came back an hour and a half later, he was suitably vague in his answers. Hansard will confirm that. That is why you are saying that commitments were not entered into. What the junior Minister said at that time was very vague. Nonetheless, I think that it very disappointing that no work has been done on a bespoke scheme, nine months from when it might have to be introduced.
I go back to my second point. At a previous meeting, probably the last time that you were here, you indicated that the IFS might be asked to update its assessment of what the child poverty figures might be in 2020, given the figures that have been on the OFMDFM website since last January in respect of what the figures would be then. Has the IFS been asked to update that information?
Mrs Scallon: The IFS contract was over three years, so it was producing four reports as a part of that contract, which is now complete. The first report was on the anticipated impacts of universal credit, which was released in January 2013. In March 2013, the first report on the child poverty forecast from 2010 to 2020 was produced, and, as you said, it was updated in January 2013. The last update was last year. So our contract has now finished. They were based on the last autumn statement, and any changes to tax and benefits —
Mr Attwood: On the last occasion, Mr Johnston indicated, subject to the Hansard report, that the IFS would be updating that work in relation to 2020. I am struggling, but my recollection is that Mr Johnston said that we needed to be cautious about the IFS report on the OFMDFM website because things would change and that the IFS's next report would indicate what changes might take place. Are you now saying that there is no IFS updated report?
Mrs Scallon: It has been updated. It was just released in —
Mrs Scallon: — in December 2012. That is the final update. Obviously, the Stormont House Agreement and the way in which welfare reform is implemented will make further changes to those forecasts. However, we are out of contract with the Institute for Fiscal Studies, so we cannot have any more updates. We would have to commission that.
Mr Johnston: Under the current contract, we do not have any more updates.
Mr Attwood: Will you update, in light of the outcome of Stormont House and following May elections, the comprehensive spending review and further austerity on the welfare and Budget side that will come from London? Will you recommend to Ministers that that should be updated so that you can proof what is happening with budget lines against the impact on absolute and relative child poverty? Surely that essential work now needs to be done.
Mr Johnston: We will obviously want to consider that. We could not consider it just yet. My understanding is that DSD will shortly produce information that will put some flesh on the bones of the Stormont House Agreement. We will see what that is and then consider with Ministers whether they wish us to commission additional work to remodel that. The previous IFS work was based on some assumptions that DSD provided to the IFS, but, obviously, those are no longer entirely valid.
Mrs Scallon: DSD is also working on one of the actions in the child poverty strategy and is putting together an administrative household database, in conjunction with its benefits information and HMRC PAYE data, to be able to identify, in absolute terms, households in poverty. I assume that that, combined with the policy simulation model, may give us a position whereby DSD could produce forecasts, and we may not have to commission work from the IFS.
Mr Attwood: I am always a bit cautious about in-house advice. An independent assessment of some of the critical matters seems to be desirable. I presume that OFMDFM heretofore agreed with that approach, given the four IFS reports. We need to take that forward, because we are entering a very critical phase. It will probably escalate rather than diminish the impact on child poverty, given the intention of the Tories if they are re-elected.
Mr Johnston: The advantage of the IFS is that it regularly produces reports for the rest of the UK.
Mr Attwood: Is OFMDFM undertaking any assessments of food poverty? Given the number of food banks and the people who may be accessing them, including families in poverty and, inevitably, many children in poverty, is any assessment being done?
Mrs Scallon: There has been some external research. I have seen specifications for work that is being done in Northern Ireland. It is not being done by OFMDFM, but I could certainly send you more information on that. We have started to look at systematic evidence reviews. There is no collection of primary data at the moment, but we are looking into a systematic evidence review that looks at food poverty in Northern Ireland. Some work has been done as part of our finding and using evidence service by Access Research Knowledge (ARK) between Ulster University and Queen's University. They have provided some early indications that food poverty is on the rise in Northern Ireland.
Mr Attwood: When we are doing work on the scale of poverty being experienced by children, indicators on fuel poverty, Key Stage 2 and food poverty all seem to be part of the narrative around that experience. They all need to be assessed and be part of the overall thinking.
Mrs Smyth: We have arranged four nations meetings; we are in discussions with England, Scotland and Wales. A meeting is coming up in February. We share experiences of food poverty, fuel poverty and general poverty issues, and we try to learn from one other and the actions that each devolved Administration is taking forward in helping to try to improve things. It will be on the agenda as we progress with the strategy.
Mr Johnston: This is our strategy.
The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): You have an action plan. That is great, because, obviously, strategies sit up there; you do not make an impact on the ground unless you have an action plan, and you have an action plan.
Mr Johnston: It is an Executive strategy led by OFMDFM.
Mr Johnston: OFMDFM is in the lead, yes.
The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Let us look at the key first actions, because I want to know what is new. Once you have done the strategy, you say, "Right, what are we going to do to make it happen?" Action 1.1 is to create 11 social enterprise hubs: that is the Department for Social Development and the Enterprise Department. Let us look at action 1.2:
"Promote 25,000 new Jobs by April 2015."
That is a Programme for Government commitment from the Enterprise Department. Let us try action 1.3:
"Help young people ... who are unemployed and seeking permanent work to look for work".
That is DEL. Action 1.4 is to:
"Provide advice for people to ensure they are getting full benefit entitlement".
That is happening through the Social Security Agency. Action 1.5 is to:
"Provide dedicated support to help young people in rural areas."
That is DARD. Action 1.6 is to:
"Provide essential skills training for adults to improve their literacy, numeracy".
That is DEL and essential skills. Henry, what is new? What is of added value in the key first actions?
Mr Johnston: Let us go back to two points. Those were the initial key first actions that we contributed or that were contributed across Departments. OFMDFM is in the lead. It is an Executive strategy charged with implementing the Child Poverty Act across the Executive as a whole. Action 1.1 is to:
"Create 11 Social Enterprise Hubs offering business advice and practical support to social enterprise entrepreneurs to encourage social enterprise business start ups within local communities."
As you say, that is delivered between DSD and DETI. It came out of a DSD signature programme. Ring-fenced central funds were used to provide the support and wherewithal to allow them to establish those social enterprise hubs and allow Invest and DETI to let contracts.
Mr Johnston: It was happening under Delivering Social Change as one of the initial projects.
Mr Johnston: That is an existing PFG commitment.
The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): It is happening anyway, and so we go. What is actually new? What have you guys done, having decided that you are going to have a new strategy to tackle child poverty, to make it happen?
Mr Johnston: As I said, we will review those action plans annually. That is the action plan that was produced in conjunction with Departments at a time when they were unclear what their future budgets would be.
The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Henry, just to be clear: are you going to sit Arlene Foster down and say, "Minister, how are you progressing the introduction of 25,000 new jobs?"?
Mr Johnston: We do that, because of the PFG commitment.
Mr Johnston: We sit the Departments down, but the Minister clears the return. With all PFG commitments, there is a process, as you know from previous briefings. We go around all Departments quarterly and get returns from them. We challenge them on those returns against progress to date. Quarterly, the head of the Civil Service chairs a group of all the permanent secretaries. We go through that and then report to the Executive programme board, which is the First Minister and deputy First Minister, with the Finance Minister in attendance along with the head of the Civil Service. That is part of the wider monitoring process.
I take your point about duplicative reporting. We will nonetheless report on progress against those key first actions. We will need to ensure as much as possible that we do not duplicate existing reporting lines. We try to do the same, for example, between the Programme for Government reporting and the economic strategy reporting. I take your point. Now that people are clear about their budget availability, we will revisit those. They are, however, the actions that people have said will make a difference to the OBA process by moving that on.
The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Of course it will. If more people are in employment, of course fewer people will be in poverty. We do not need you to spend a lot of money on a strategy to tell us that, if more people are in employment, fewer people will be in poverty. We know that. It is about the actions you will take. How many strategies contain the target of promoting 25,000 jobs by April 2015?
Mr Johnston: At least three.
The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): OK. All done, members? I think that Alex would like more information on a particular issue. Janis, Janet and Henry, thank you very much indeed.