Bringing Hope, Building Futures: Tackling child poverty delivery plan 2026-2031 – annex 7: Equalities Impact Assessment (EQIA)

Executive summary

The final tackling child poverty delivery plan under the Act sets out a strategic framework to drive progress in tackling child poverty for the period 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2031.

It builds on action taken over the life of the first two plans:

• Every child, every chance: tackling child poverty delivery plan 2018-2022
• Best Start, Bright Futures: tackling child poverty delivery plan 2022 to 2026

As set out in Section 9 of the Act, the delivery plan must set out:

a) the measures that the Scottish Ministers propose to take during the period of the plan for the purpose of meeting the child poverty targets,

b) an assessment of the contribution the proposed measures are expected to make to meeting the child poverty targets,

c) an explanation of how that assessment has been arrived at, and

d) an assessment of the financial resources required to fund the proposed measures.

The Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) requires the Scottish Government to pay due regard to the matters set out in section 149 of the Equality Act 2010.^[1] The Scottish Government must also (along with other specific public authorities) assess the impact of applying a proposed new or revised policy or practice against the three needs of the PSED. Therefore, the Scottish Government has undertaken an Equality Impact Assessment (EQIA) as part of the process to develop the third tackling child poverty delivery plan (“the plan”).

An EQIA aims to consider how a policy may impact, either positively or negatively, on different sectors of the population in different ways. Equality legislation covers the Protected Characteristics (PCs) of: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.

The Act specifies minimum consultation requirements which must be met. To respond to this, as well as our duties under the PSED, extensive consultation was held with a wide range of stakeholders to hear their views on implementation and progress since the publication of the first two delivery plans - and to obtain feedback on the known barriers faced by priority families and families with protected characteristics, and how to overcome these.

The plan sets out a strategic framework for delivery across 2026-31 and the analysis presented in this EQIA is a summary of consideration across the four key themes and fifteen interconnected areas which make up the focus of the plan. This EQIA is not intended to replace policy specific assessments. Some policies are already in implementation and have undergone an EQIA, while other commitments in early development will require their own EQIA to ensure that the specific barriers for each protected characteristic are fully considered. This EQIA should be read, understood and used together with the other impact assessments which together have been used to inform the contents of the plan.

This EQIA has found that the key themes and areas of intervention set out the in the plan will be mainly positive across many protected characteristics, in particular age, disability, pregnancy and maternity, race and sex. This is largely due to the overlap between these characteristics and the child poverty priority family groups. For other characteristics, particularly gender reassignment and sexual orientation, the data we hold is more limited. Nevertheless, we have found no evidence of negative consequences for people with these characteristics at this time, and we will keep this under review as part of the ongoing monitoring of this EQIA. For certain characteristics - including age, disability, race and sex - higher levels of child poverty persist, and therefore the targeted action for the priority family groups and wider action to reduce child poverty will be particularly beneficial.

Specifically, the EQIA considers impacts on protected characteristic groups based on the three tests it is required to address:

• Does this policy eliminate unlawful discrimination for each of the nine Protected Characteristics?
• Does this policy advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not?
• Does this policy foster or encourage good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not?