Scottish Churches Parliamentary Office, Edinburgh - Briefing Document Six

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Parliamentary Officer:Rev Graham Blount
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Briefing Document No 6 - Page 4 of 4

Social Justice ... A Scotland Where Everyone Matters - Continued.

The Scottish Churches Social Inclusion Network has made the following response:

1. The commitment to putting social justice at the heart of Executive policies represents a welcome change of climate, and one for which the churches amongst others have been calling for some time. Having previously expressed concern that the language of social inclusion might dilute the commitment to social justice and to tackling poverty, we are wholehearted in welcoming the return to the (Biblical) language of justice, as well as the general emphasis and commitment expressed by these documents.

2. Of course, the key signs of that commitment will be in Executive action. We look forward to the promised Action Plan in which the commitment will take shape, and to seeing the drive to tackle injustice running through Executive policy in areas not covered in the targets. We accept that some of the bolder objectives are indeed long-term, but that should neither be an excuse to postpone urgent action nor an evasion of accountability.

3. We welcome the fact that some of the milestones measure inequality, some measure "absolute" poverty and others deal more with opportunities. While realising that it is relatively easy to construct a "shopping list" of targets and milestones, we do have some concerns about those which the Executive has chosen, and about areas omitted:

(a) The opportunity has been missed to adopt European or other international definitions of poverty and unemployment, which would have allowed international comparisons and restricted any future "massaging" of figures
(b) The emphasis remains on individuals, with a relatively brief mention of communities (we believe that injustice and inequality should be tackled at least s much at community level as in individuals; targeting individuals has dangers and can increase exclusion)
(c) It is therefore important that figures should be broken down geographically, so that overall improvements do not mask differing outcomes or growing inequalities
(d) We would also want to see more attention to areas of multiple deprivation, where several indicators overlap with cumulative effect (it is vital that the action plan targets concentrations of poverty and inequalities)
(e) While there have been indications elsewhere of a commitment to tackling inequalities in health, we are disappointed that these are not at the heart of this strategy
(f) We are concerned at the absence of milestones in the areas of food and fuel poverty, debt problems and access to basic financial services, transport (especially in relation to rural poverty) and decent housing
(g) There is no recognition that action to address inequalities will have a cost; we are concerned that the commitment is severely constrained by the Executive's refusal to use the Parliament's tax-varying powers to redistribute resources in line with these commitments

4. Our most serious concern with the whole approach is that it remains very much a "top down" strategy. We believe that it is vital to engage with local communities in ways which enable them to set targets and monitor progress themselves; externally determined targets can be a blunt instrument in deciding local spending priorities. We are aware of some initiatives of this type through SIPs and local authorities, and hope that this will become much more central to the strategy. Meanwhile, we are ourselves developing a project which will build on the existing community work of the churches to work with groups in different parts of Scotland, establishing their priority targets and setting up ongoing monitoring of progress towards these. We hope that this will come to represent an important, independent contribution.

5. We accept the challenge to the public, private and voluntary sectors to play a part in responding to the Executive's commitment. Churches, of course, are already heavily engaged in this, but we would be keen to discuss with the Executive how best we might respond to a new challenge.