Children’s commissioners’ review asks for welfare cuts and repeal of Human Rights Act to be reconsidered, and warns children will be denied justice in courts

The Conservative government’s policies risk systematically stripping children of their rights, a report for the United Nations has found.

Anassessment by the four children’s commissioners of the UK, the first full-scale review for seven years, called on the government to reconsider its deep welfare cuts, voiced “serious concerns” about children being denied access to justice in the courts, and called on ministers to rethink plans to repeal the Human Rights Act.



The commissioners, representing each of the constituent nations of the UK, conducted their review of the state of children’s policies as part of evidence they will present on Wednesday to the UN revealing how much progress has been made under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Many of the government’s decisions are questioned by the report as being in breach of the convention, which has been ratified by the UK. England’s children’s commissioner, Anne Longfield, said: “We are finding and highlighting that much of the country’s laws and policies defaults away from the view of the child. That’s in breach of the treaty. What we found again and again was that the best interest of the child is not taken into account.”



In particular there are continuing concerns over the issues of abuse and the impact on children – with 25% of children in the UK exposed to domestic abuse between adults in their homes at some point in childhood. Studies reveal that in family courts “many of the youngest and most vulnerable children are currently not heard”.

Perhaps the most shocking finding is the rise of peer-on-peer domestic abuse among young people. Commissioners say that almost two thirds of “contact sexual abuse of children was perpetrated by other children”.

Longfield said that “over the next five years it will be the case that there will be an enormous number of children through the court system and we need to reflect the need to engage and listen to them in a way that is not happening now”.

The commissioners argue the government’s plans to “break the formal link between British courts and the European Court of Human Rights” by scrapping the Human Rights Act is a backwards step.

“The act has been vital in promoting and protecting the rights of children in the United Kingdom and the European Court of Human Rights has had an important role in developing the protection offered to children. The commissioners are concerned that any amendment or replacement of the HRA is likely to be regressive,” the report says.



Another worry is the area of welfare, and ministers’ plan to cut £12bn from the benefits budget. There are now 4.1m children living in absolute poverty – 500,000 more than there were when David Cameron came to power.

The report notes that ministers ignored the UK supreme court when it found the “benefit cap” – the £25,000 limit on welfare that disproportionately affects families with children, and particularly those with a larger number of children – to be in breach of Article 3 of the convention.



Instead the “government has recently announced plans to lower the benefit cap to £23,000 per annum per household”. Scotland’s children’s commissioner, Tam Baillie, said that the “last time we had a very, very deep recession in the 1980s and children services were cut, it took a generation to recover because of the number of kids in poverty. We don’t want to repeat these mistakes.”

There are also dramatic changes to the justice, immigration and education systems that appear to “routinely flout” the convention. For example the report points out that a minimum income requirement imposed on non-EU migrants in 2012 aimed to limit the number able to enter the UK. However, this has led to “the enforced separation of families, including children, from their non-(European) parent”.



The report calls for a review of the measure over concerns it has “led to routine violations of Articles 9 and 10 of the convention”.

There are also areas of policy where the commissioners say ministers have missed the chance to draw the young into society. Noting that in Scotland three quarters of young people went to the polls in the independence referendum, the report says “16- and 17-year-olds should be given the vote in all elections and referenda in the UK”.

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The government equalities office declined to comment on the report. A spokesperson for the Department of Work and Pensions said: “This report ignores the fact that the proportion of individuals in relative poverty is now at the lowest level since the mid-1980s. The best route out of poverty is work and this government makes no apology for its efforts to raise incomes by expanding employment opportunities.

“Our reforms to the welfare system are focused on making work pay and our reforms to the tax system are allowing people to keep more of what they earn.”