Official Report 858KB pdf
The next item of business is a debate on motion S7M-01022, in the name of Shirley-Anne Somerville, on programme for government: eradicating child poverty—the Scottish Government’s defining mission.
15:10
There are few things more important than ensuring that every child grows up loved, safe and respected, and able to reach their full potential. That is why, despite the significant challenges that we continue to face, eradicating child poverty is the defining mission and number 1 priority of this Government, and, coupled with the targets that we have set in statute, we are determined to deliver. The programme for government that was published earlier this week makes clear our commitment to go further so that children and families can reach their full potential.
We are building on firm foundations and the solid progress delivered since 2017. In March, I was pleased to publish the Government’s third tackling child poverty delivery plan, which sets out how we will drive continued progress on child poverty in the years ahead. It sets out wide-ranging action, spanning Government portfolios and to be delivered with partners across the country, to help boost household incomes, reduce the cost of living and help children and their families to thrive. Modelling that was published alongside the plan estimates that those actions will keep 100,000 children out of relative poverty this year.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has recognised the difference we are making. It estimates that some of the lowest-income households with children will be around £2,760 a year better off because of our approach to income tax and benefits, including the Scottish child payment. Our programme for government builds on those actions, setting out our commitments for the coming year and our ambitions for the current session of Parliament.
Members across this chamber will have heard loud and clear from their constituents the impact that the cost of living crisis is having on their lives. Those concerns will only grow with the increase to the energy price cap that was announced last week, with bills already £300 higher than when the United Kingdom Government came into office, despite its pledge to cut those bills by the same amount. We have all heard how the rising cost of essentials such as food and energy mean that people in our communities are having to make decisions that they should never have to make. That is why tackling the crisis is at the forefront of our efforts, bringing together our action to eradicate child poverty, grow our economy and tackle the climate emergency.
This year, we are continuing to invest more than £3.5 billion in measures that will help to cut costs for households and boost their incomes. That includes continuing free prescriptions and the delivery of free bus travel for more than 2.4 million people; freezing fares on ScotRail services; and investing in our package of winter heating payments, which are helping thousands of households that are struggling the most to meet their energy bills.
That sits alongside our wider investment in social security, including our five family payments, which are providing unparalleled support to low-income families in Scotland in comparison with those in the rest of the UK, helping them to meet the cost of essentials and give their children the best start to life. Together, our policies form the most generous cost of living package in the UK, but we know that we need to go further.
That is why our programme for government commits to protecting and expanding support, over the current session of Parliament, to ensure that more people get the help that they need; we are taking meaningful steps this year to do just that. From Monday, we will deliver a £2 bus-fare cap across the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport area, cutting the cost of bus travel for thousands of households and building toward a national roll-out by the end of this Parliament. We will consult on legislation to establish legal price ceilings on some essential food items to tackle the cost of the weekly shop. We will make nearly £2.8 million available to local authorities to write off school meal debt for families who are impacted by the cost of living crisis. That is in addition to our new welcome to school bags and the increased funding for the school clothing grant.
Together with the steps that we are taking to develop the systems and legislation needed to increase the Scottish child payment to £40 for families with a child under the age of one, that action will help to further ease the burden of everyday costs on families.
While we cannot accept the Green amendment today, I do wish to talk about the premise that women’s poverty is children’s poverty. That is an exceptionally important point, which we need to recognise. I also think that it is very important—particularly given the discussions at First Minister’s question time today—to recognise that women’s inequality is one of the root causes of violence against women in our society. It, too, must be tackled.
Our programme for government includes a clear and unambiguous statement on our intention to end homelessness in Scotland for good and for everyone, and on the importance of housing in the fight against poverty. We will do all that we can over this parliamentary session to give everyone access to a safe, warm place to call home, helping people off the streets and ending the use of unsafe and harmful temporary accommodation for children.
We have already launched our new first homes fund, and we have committed record levels of public sector investment to our affordable housing supply programme, which will support the delivery of 36,000 affordable homes and will provide up to 24,000 children with a place to call home during this session.
We have set out how we will go further. We are implementing our new homelessness prevention duties, which will ensure that people get the help that they need before they reach crisis point. That is public service reform in action.
I am sure that most members would commend the Government for trying in many of those areas, including by tackling the problems of what is effectively a failed system. Surely that is not a long-term solution, however. I have not heard the cabinet secretary talk about growing the economy, creating jobs and the value of good work. Surely that is the long-term solution to all those failures. We cannot keep patching up the system; we need to build a long-term solution. Will the cabinet secretary tell us more about that in the remainder of her speech?
Willie Rennie and I will be in agreement about that point—if I can expand on my remarks. While it is important that the Government assists households, particularly those with children, through the social security systems, it is exceptionally important to support people into work. That is exactly why the delivery plan in the programme for government mentioned the raising income through skills and education—RISE—initiative, which is being implemented through colleges and is about getting skills and childcare to work together. That is exactly why whole family support is important and it is exactly why the multiyear support for our employability schemes is integral to our programme. It is not a matter of focusing on one part of the issue; it is about looking to see what the individual needs and how we can best support them, whether that relates to childcare, transport or employability and skills.
Does the cabinet secretary recognise that, while the whole family support fund very recently gave out £20 million, that is meant to be spent by March next year? That does not enable planning or long-term certainty for the agencies that are getting that money. A lot of it is therefore frittered away or has to be manipulated. The third sector organisations using those funds need five-year stability of funding.
That is exactly why that £20 million fund is a multiyear commitment that we have made. I recognise the point that the member makes.
We will roll out our £50 million homelessness prevention fund, with £1 million already provided to strengthen tenancy sustainment activity by registered social landlords in Glasgow. We will continue to support an estimated 15,000 families who are impacted by the UK Government’s freeze of local housing allowance rates, thus supporting families to meet the costs of their rent and helping prevent homelessness. We will phase in the establishment of more homes Scotland from 1 April next year to bring together funding, expertise and delivery tools under one roof, helping to deliver more of the homes that people need.
Together, the action we will take over the course of the session will increase the supply of social and affordable homes in the places where they are needed, helping to tackle child poverty, to support sustainable communities and to drive economic growth.
Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?
I am just about to get to the part on skills and employment, which Willie Rennie is so keen to hear about, but I will give way to Thomas Kerr.
I appreciate that. This is on homelessness, the cabinet secretary will be glad to hear. I wonder if she agrees with me and the Scottish National Party councillor and soon-to-be leader of Glasgow City Council, Ricky Bell, who mentioned local priority on BBC Radio Scotland this morning and asked for it to be reinstated.
I have known Ricky Bell for many a year, and it would be fair to say that it would be hard to find much that Ricky Bell and Thomas Kerr have in common. Ricky Bell is interested in helping the people of Glasgow and ensuring that they have a sustainable future; it is unfortunate that Mr Kerr is more interested in causing division, in Glasgow and elsewhere.
Ensuring that people have access to the skills and opportunities that they need to succeed is also key to eradicating child poverty. Across this session of Parliament, we will fund at least 150,000 apprenticeships, create new schemes to support disabled people into work, and provide national co-ordination of a skills and employability programme that delivers locally to meet people’s needs. Our commitment to invest up to £90 million a year in devolved employability services—another multiyear commitment—includes dedicated funding to support parents’ access to and progress in work. It will build on the £22 million of funding delivered this year, in partnership with Scotland’s colleges, which I mentioned to Mr Rennie earlier. Our action will help not only to increase household incomes from employment, but to support economic growth, by helping businesses to access the skilled workforces that they need.
Our approach to increasing earnings is also underpinned by our commitment to transforming the childcare offer for families by the end of this parliamentary session, providing support 52 weeks a year for children from the age of nine months to the end of primary school.
Our programme for government sets out the key steps that we will take to make our ambition a reality. That includes continuing to fund a range of targeted childcare support for low-income families, including our extra time programme and our childcare early adopter communities, supporting more than 7,000 children and their families. It includes investing an additional £15 million this year for expanding breakfast club provision, to help schools, councils and third sector partners to prepare for the introduction of a national breakfast club offer in all primary schools by August 2027. From August 2029, there will be an after-school and holiday childcare offer, which will reduce the cost of childcare at the times that we know cause families the most challenge. In the coming year, we will publish and consult on a blueprint, setting out that phased delivery, with a focus on what matters to families.
We know that ending child poverty will never be about income alone. People’s lives are complex, and public services can play a key role in helping to prevent poverty and supporting people out of crisis. Across this session of Parliament, we will work with our local partners to deliver on our vision for whole family support, ensuring that people get the right support at the right time and place, for as long as they need it. The work that we have already undertaken through the fairer future partnerships has shown what a difference that approach can make when we work together.
I am pleased that, since returning to government in May, we have already delivered further progress. We have awarded £2 million to support the expansion of Children First’s national front door support line, which offers a one-step gateway to support families across Scotland. We have awarded 10 charities a share of £20 million from our whole family support third sector delivery fund, with the charities involved estimating that they will be able to assist up to 35,000 families. Last month, I was pleased to speak with families supported by the Salvesen Mindroom Centre in Dundee; they made it clear to me the difference that such services can make to their lives.
We will continue to build on that progress by maximising the opportunities for lawful data sharing and by co-designing a partnership agreement with the third sector that recognises its critical role in tackling poverty and inequalities. Again, that is public service reform in action, focused on enabling local partners to bring support together and making services work for the people.
The programme for government published this week sets out our ambitions for Scotland over the next five years. It unashamedly sets out our commitment to ensuring that families have access to the safe, warm and affordable homes that they need to thrive; to delivering a transformational expansion of childcare; and to delivering on our vision for whole family support. These actions will help to change the lives of children and families across the country and will drive continued progress towards the eradication of child poverty.
In June, I announced a review of our child poverty targets to further strengthen our approach, ensuring that the targets continue to drive the right decisions and the changes that families need. Our approach is underpinned by our commitment to rewiring the state in Scotland and delivering public service reform that is focused on improving our public services so that they work for the people of Scotland.
In 2017, members unanimously agreed legislation in relation to the eradication of child poverty. Although some members and parties in the chamber have changed, I really hope that our focus on child poverty has not.
I move,
That the Parliament notes the publication of the Scottish Government’s Programme for Government, Ambitious for Scotland, and its actions aimed at eradicating child poverty and supporting families with the cost of living; recognises the ambition to go further by transforming the childcare offer for families, delivering a £2 bus fare cap across all of Scotland, and investing record public sector funding in affordable housing; welcomes the focus on ensuring support for families is integrated, person-centred and accessible, including through delivery of the £20 million Whole Family Support Third Sector Fund; supports the commitment to build on action set out in the Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan for 2026-31, which is estimated to keep 100,000 children out of relative poverty this year, and to going further and faster so that every child has the chance to succeed regardless of their circumstances, and commits to working together to drive continued progress toward the eradication of child poverty in Scotland.
I call Julie MacDougall to speak to and move amendment S7M-01022.5.
15:24
I thank the minister for securing this important debate. It is also important to state from the outset that Reform members believe that more Scots should be able to feel that they can start families. In the face of Scotland’s demographic crisis, our young people should be encouraged to do so and raise our next generation of workers, as opposed to the import-first policy that is shared by the rest of the parties here.
I want to focus on two major factors that can have a massive impact on a child’s life chances and family life—the economic opportunities available to their parents and access to housing.
In its “Poverty in Scotland 2025” report, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that all lower-income families—regardless of size—had experienced steep declines in their quality of life. It was particularly concerning to read that the rate of what it called in-work poverty increased to six in 10 people, with three-quarters of children who are classified as being in poverty falling into that category.
Although I commend the Scottish National Party Government for finally talking about employment as a means of addressing child poverty, it seems to once again take a back seat in this programme for government. When reading the section on putting more money in families’ pockets, I noticed that, out of the five bullet-point policies that were presented, only one of them talked about low-income parents staying in jobs. That is simply not good enough. It was especially disappointing to see that one of those policies encourages maximising “take-up of benefits”.
I echo the sentiments of my party leader, Malcolm Offord, expressed on Tuesday. For those who are able and fit to take it on, meaningful and well-paid work should always be more financially and emotionally rewarding than claiming benefits. However, to achieve that, the SNP needs to support our local businesses and industries to start creating better-paying jobs. That would mean overriding the nearly 20 years of net zero ideology and overbearing business regulations pursued by this Government, both of which have been proudly paraded in this latest document.
Even when talking about skilled jobs, these so-called new ideas seem to fall flat when this SNP Government proposes them. For more than a decade now, instead of encouraging young people to celebrate success in any field, the SNP has indulged itself in the same kind of snobbishness as the old Blairites. That is a closed mindset that says that going to university is inherently more valuable and means that those people are more educated than someone who picks up tools and gets a technical qualification—
Will the member take an intervention?
I would like to make some progress with my speech.
Will the member take an intervention on that point?
I would like to make some progress, as I said.
That closed mindset suggests that those people are more educated than someone who picks up tools and gets a technical qualification in college or simply learns better on the job.
Will the member take an intervention on that point?
If Mr Brown would not mind, I would like to continue with my speech and then I will come back to him. [Interruption.]
Members, can we hear the member who has the floor, please?
I think that I am allowed to make way on my speech. Is that correct, Deputy Presiding Officer?
Yes.
Thank you.
If that were not the case, the Scottish Government would not have been sleepwalking into a national skills gap crisis for the past 10 years, and our colleges would have been given the support and respect that they so rightly deserve.
I remind members of the question that I asked John Swinney before summer recess. I asked him whether he would look into reforming the funding mechanisms for apprenticeships to sustainably establish the many placements that the programme for government hopes to create. At the time, I was given a backhanded response, but the programme for government gives me my real answer. The Government does not have a plan, it does not have a clue and it does not want to listen to the colleges that are on the brink of financial collapse. [Interruption.]
I want to try to wind up by talking about the difficulties that families and children face on housing. [Interruption.]
Members, can you settle down, please?
As a Fife councillor, I have personally witnessed too many cases—
Will the member take an intervention? [Interruption.]
I will wait until you have finished and then I will continue. [Interruption.]
Members, we have an important debate to get through.
As a Fife councillor, I have personally witnessed too many cases of families being crammed into housing that is way too small for their needs.
At one time, social housing used to be a safety net for those families who fell on hard times. Now, it works like a lottery in which you might be put in for a ticket but there is little chance of actually winning. We in Reform have said from the start that not only do we need more housing, we need to make sure that social housing prioritises the locals, especially children, who are in most need.
Once again, I can only say that anything in the programme for government proposed by John Swinney that resembles a good idea on that issue lacks both detail and credibility. With some help from the Greens and others, the SNP has created what is probably the most hostile regulatory landscape when it comes to building homes in Scotland. It has meant that homes are more expensive for developers to build, more expensive to sell and, therefore, less available to low-income families. Once again, the Government seems to think that creating more bureaucratic institutions, drafting more laws and throwing more of our constituents’ money at the problem will make it go away. That is simply not good enough: there are real lives at stake and too many children, particularly those in social care situations, who will struggle for the rest of their lives due to nearly 20 years of spin, piecemeal fixes and corporate bullet-point policies disguised as any kind of real leadership.
This programme for government was not indicative of a fresh, innovative Administration. It proves more than ever that the Government is desperate for ideas, but not so desperate that it will listen to the people on the ground who may contradict it. I was elected to reflect the views of those people who have been ignored for far too long. On that basis, I cannot support the programme for government.
I move amendment S7M-01022.5, to leave out from “recognises” to end, and insert:
“notes that, by the Scottish Government’s own admission, child poverty is above its 2023-24 interim target of 18%, meaning that approximately 210,000 children are still living in poverty; expresses its disappointment that, despite the buzzwords and branding of its title, Bringing Hope, Building Futures, the Scottish Government’s tackling child poverty delivery plan for 2026-2031 will not reach the 18% target until 2031; acknowledges that child poverty cannot be tackled in isolation, but rather by the totality of Scottish Government’s policies; believes, that, in particular, the combination of Scottish Government policies on taxation and business regulation as well as lagging educational attainment have a detrimental impact on the economy and, as a result, the incomes and job opportunities for families, which undermine the positive impacts of policies designed to reduce child poverty, and calls on the Scottish Government to commission an independent review into whether its taxation, business regulation and education polices have led to the higher than expected levels of child poverty.”
I remind members that it is up to the member who is speaking whether they wish to take an intervention.
15:32
When the Parliament passed the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act in 2017, the cabinet secretary who led that legislation, Angela Constance, told members:
“statements of intent are all very well, but it is what we do that counts.”—[Official Report, 8 November 2017; c 62.]
I completely agree. Nearly a decade later, when it comes to child poverty, that intent still lies far from delivery and Scotland’s children continue to pay the price. Children are still going to school hungry, despite their parents skipping meals themselves. They are worried about rent, bills and whether their family can keep a roof over their heads. Those are the kinds of worries that should be the furthest thing from children’s minds. They should be dreaming big and thinking about what they can achieve in life, rather than having those concerns.
It is a real worry that child poverty has become a generational tragedy. Too often, children born into poverty grow up to raise their own children in poverty. Despite having the powers to take a different path, we are still failing far too many young people. The Government comes to the chamber at the start of this parliamentary session and, once again, says that eradicating child poverty is its defining mission. However, it seems as though, instead of having a credible plan to meet its own legislative targets, the Government is settling for moving the goalposts. Reviewing the definition of poverty will not lift a single child out of it. The Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 was meant to hold ministers accountable for progress, but organisations such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation have questioned whether the latest delivery plan meets the requirements of the act, and only 26 per cent of people in Scotland believe that the Government has done enough to tackle child poverty. Ministers have argued that income-based targets fail to capture the impact of childcare, employability support and wider family services—but the problem is not that those policies are missing from the targets; it is that they have not been delivered at the scale that we require.
Nowhere is that seen as clearly as it is in housing. Today, nearly 10,000 children are living in temporary accommodation without the security and stability of a permanent home. No Government in the world could claim credibly that child poverty is a defining mission while record numbers of children remain trapped in temporary accommodation. Housing policy is child poverty policy. If ending child poverty is truly the Government’s mission, then getting those 10,000 children into permanent homes should be the priority.
Labour has set out practical measures to reduce poverty, including helping parents into secure employment through a parent work scheme, affordable childcare that works for families, support with holiday childcare costs, family network hubs that are based on sure start principles, breakfast clubs in every primary school, action on school debt and a renewed focus on tackling homelessness.
Clearly, there are welcome areas of crossover in the programme for government. We welcome them and we would be happy to support them, but we would like to work to push the Government further on some of the measures that I mentioned. Those are anti-poverty policies because they help parents earn more, reduce costs and improve children’s life chances.
I think that Mr Griffin and some of his Labour colleagues have described the Scottish child payment as “game changing”. It has undoubtedly supported our aim of reducing child poverty in Scotland. If the UK Government replicated that, it would also have a significant impact across the UK. Why have his UK colleagues not sought to follow suit?
The child payment has had a clear impact, but it has not had enough of an impact. The Scottish Government is still close to missing its legally binding child poverty targets—so that is still an issue.
The UK Government has implemented a range of child poverty reduction measures, including one that Neil Gray and I have campaigned for: the removal of the two-child limit. That will be the single biggest measure to lift children out of poverty in the UK since before the early 1990s.
There is still work to do. Scotland has done something different with the child payment, but that is the beauty of devolution. Social security is devolved to Scotland, and that is to be welcomed, but it is not to say that nothing is happening at the UK level. Ongoing work is happening there.
The UK Government is working on child poverty, bringing together housing, employment, childcare and family support in a completely cross-governmental way, because reducing child poverty has never been only about social security, as Neil Gray would acknowledge. It is also about providing secure homes, affordable childcare and well-paid work and using absolutely every lever at our disposal to tackle child poverty and improve family incomes and opportunities.
Although we campaigned for the Scottish child payment way before its introduction, and it has lifted children out of poverty, there is more to be done. Wider intervention by the Scottish Government is needed if it is to lift children out of poverty.
I ask Mr Griffin to conclude.
I will finish with a question to the Government. Does it still intend to meet the child poverty targets that were set out in the 2017 act? Reviewing them will not pull a single child out of poverty, but delivering on them will.
I move amendment S7M-01022.1, to leave out from “supports” and insert:
“regrets that, while eradicating child poverty has been a defining mission for the Scottish Government for nearly a decade, too many children remain trapped in poverty, record numbers are living in temporary accommodation and key anti-poverty measures have not been delivered; reaffirms the commitment to meet the targets set out in the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017; believes that a new approach is clearly needed with a focus on both delivery and tackling the root causes of poverty; further believes that tackling child poverty requires action across housing, homelessness, childcare, employment and family support as well as finally closing the attainment gap, and believes that if ministers are serious about delivery, they should engage in cross-party working to achieve the statutory targets and improve outcomes for children and families across Scotland."
15:39
Six years ago, the Scottish Government declared a climate emergency; two years ago, it declared a housing emergency; and, as we heard in June, Scotland remains in a child poverty emergency.
The Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice and Housing has laid out how she plans to eradicate child poverty in the years ahead. That is no small feat, and I commend her dedication and holistic view on how to tackle child poverty in this country through whole family support, childcare and cost of living measures. I also welcome her agreement with the part of the Greens’ amendment that connects child poverty with women’s poverty, and I look forward to working with her on that front.
However, I call on her today to be braver and bolder and to rise to the challenge of progressively increasing the Scottish child payment, during this session of Parliament, for all children under the age of 16. Also, we should be looking at a top-up for those parents under the age of 25 who are so cruelly impacted by the UK Government’s young parent penalty, to ensure that their entitlement is the same as that of older parents.
In this increasingly post-truth world, I invite members to look at the evidence on child poverty. This week, I brought members of the Child Poverty Action Group to Parliament. Together with the End Child Poverty coalition, which is made up of more than 150 organisations, CPAG has been calling on the Scottish Government to increase the Scottish child payment progressively over the course of this session of Parliament.
Those organisations work with children and families day in, day out. They are the experts who hold the real, horrible and traumatic lived experience of children in poverty. We owe them a great deal for the work that they do, and I thank them all. They came to Parliament to witness my asking the First Minister the same question: if the Government really wants to tackle child poverty head on, would he increase the Scottish child payment? The answer was that he would do that only by a wee bit, and only for one very specifically targeted group.
The programme for government contends that child poverty is a defining challenge for this Government but, according to its own analysis, it is set to miss its 2030 target if we do not radically rethink what it means to live in poverty. Standing here as a working-class person, I do not know what it is like to live in relative or absolute poverty. I understand many of the hurdles that come with being working class, but I have never had to think about whether I will eat today. It is crucial for me to recognise, understand and advocate for those 150 organisations and for families, constituents and children otherwise I will not be doing my job properly.
I return to the evidence. The Institute for Public Policy Research tells us that hard cash—money—giving direct financial relief is the best way to tackle poverty directly and quickly. The Scottish child payment has successfully cut child poverty in Scotland by 4 to 5 percentage points. If I were in the Scottish Government, I would be channelling all my efforts into that tried and tested model, and not completely reinventing the wheel. As I have said, I agree that we need to take the holistic look at child poverty that many others have already mentioned in today’s debate, but, if we want to make a real difference right now, we must increase the Scottish child payment.
I keep hearing that money is another stumbling block. How are we going to fund an increase? Yes, it will cost money, and we all need to think creatively about how to fund initiatives in these financially precarious times. Is that not what we are here to do? We are meant to grapple with complex problems, deal with the hard stuff and solve them.
Increasing the Scottish child payment to £40 a week for all of Scotland’s impoverished children will cost £180 million. That has been set out in writing, because the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has done the costings. We give tax relief to arms companies, private jet polluters—as we heard yesterday—private schools and big banks when we could be channelling that money towards the country’s most vulnerable children. How can we possibly justify that? We are talking about an investment in our young people so that they can thrive and can have their own children, who would then have children who would not need a Scottish child payment. It is an investment in our young people today and in tomorrow’s generation. It is preventative spending.
I have heard the argument that such an increase would be a sticking plaster, and I agree. I do not want us to need the Scottish child payment, but we must do something right now—and quickly—not only to meet the targets but for all the children in the country who need it most.
I am going to pre-empt the coming groan by saying that I truly believe that, if we had the full powers of a normal independent country, we would do welfare policy a lot differently. Unlike the Conservatives, whose leader down south is today putting the two-child benefit Into her spending plans, we would do things differently here.
Right now, we have far too many children living in deep poverty. That is the top line, and I see a tried and tested model for a way out for those families. Why do we not use it?
I move amendment S7M-10122.2, to insert at end:
"; calls for decisive and committed action to disrupt financial inequality between women and men, and recognises the need for targeted action to confront women’s poverty as a vital part of realising its mission to eradicate child poverty; supports the progressive increase to the Scottish Child Payment to £40 per week for all children, not just those under one year old, with the goal of increasing this to £55 per week by the end of the current Parliamentary session, and believes that an increase to the Scottish Child Payment for young parents must be made to compensate for the UK Government’s Young Parent Penalty."
15:44
Before I begin, I highlight the fact that I am a councillor on Highland Council.
I am keen to approach this session of Parliament by looking for ways for us to agree and to work together wherever possible, and I am glad that we agree on the need to eradicate child poverty. I commend the Government for the amount of money that it is spending on doing so, but money alone will not overcome that challenge. The issue runs deeper than that.
Around half of all children in Highland live in areas where people’s access to essential services is among the most limited in Scotland. The direction that we take needs to encompass all of Scotland’s children. Our policies need to be flexible enough to match the unique challenges that are faced in different parts of the country.
For example, the Government’s motion talks about transforming childcare in Scotland, which is excellent. Good provision of childcare helps parents to get back into work, which is the best way to lift children out of poverty, so we need to make that process easier, more affordable and more accessible to people up and down the country. Unfortunately, no matter how much we reduce the childcare bill for parents, we are not addressing the core issue of provision. There are simply not enough childcare spaces available in Scotland, particularly up in the Highlands.
Over the summer, I visited the local jobcentre in Inverness, where I heard about the amazing work that the staff are doing to encourage people to get back into work. Astonishingly, they told me that they have a pot of money set aside for paying up to 80 per cent of the childcare costs of some people who are seeking employment but that money just sits there unused, because people cannot find childcare provision. That is why more than two fifths of rural businesses cite childcare issues as one of the main reasons why they are struggling to recruit. Our amendment calls on the Scottish Government to improve access to childcare in rural communities.
The Government’s motion talks about delivering a £2 bus fare cap across all of Scotland. That could make a huge difference, but only if there are buses for people to go on. Transform Scotland has stated clearly that
“We shouldn’t confuse affordability with availability.”
Let us take the bus pass for under-22s, which is an example of a good policy that should, in principle, help young parents to get into education or employment. However, Highland Council’s analysis concluded that uptake was far greater in more densely populated areas than in rural communities. Why? The reason for that is the greater availability of bus services in urban areas. Policies such as the bus fare cap are good and well meaning but, at the moment, they are not getting to those who need them the most.
The programme for government is entitled “Ambitious for Scotland”. I share that ambition. I want it to succeed, and I want to eradicate child poverty. I am keen to work with the Government to do just that, which is why I hope that it will be able to accept my amendment.
I move amendment S7M-01022.4, to insert at end:
“; calls for action to ensure that families, particularly in rural communities, do not face challenges in accessing childcare services with parents and guardians having real choice and flexibility over how to organise their lives and fewer barriers to work; acknowledges that, by providing a choice, parents are enabled to return to work if they want, boosting family incomes, tackling child poverty and growing the economy; believes that access to early learning and childcare (ELC) would be enhanced by introducing fairer rates for private, voluntary and independent providers of ELC to cover the actual costs of delivering high-quality ELC; further believes that the Scottish Government commitment in its Programme for Government to invest in independent providers does not go far enough, and calls on it to fully close the funding gap between independent and local government providers of ELC and to ensure that parents have sufficient access to childcare provision wherever they are in Scotland.”
15:48
I declare an interest as a councillor on Aberdeenshire Council.
There will be no disagreement among members on the statement that eradicating child poverty is an incredibly important task for any Government. Unfortunately, child poverty remains a persistent challenge in Scotland. In my opinion, the SNP has failed to meaningfully reduce it since coming into power. Instead of fully using the powers that are available to it to tackle poverty, it has too often chosen to shift blame rather than take responsibility for policy failures and financial mismanagement. After almost two decades in government, the SNP must be judged on its record, not its rhetoric.
I am more than happy to provide the member with the record of the SNP Government, which shows that Scotland has the lowest level of child poverty anywhere in these islands. Does he accept that?
Thank you for that intervention, but will you admit that child poverty still remains unacceptably high in Scotland? Whether it is the lowest in the UK is irrelevant. The issue is that it is still unacceptably high in Scotland. [Interruption.] We are in the Scottish Parliament. I am making this speech in Edinburgh, not London. [Interruption.] That is the truth. [Interruption.] It is the truth. [Interruption.] Well look—after years of missed targets by the SNP and rising welfare costs, we will continue to hold the SNP to account and to demand a credible plan to tackle poverty.
The gentleman says that it is irrelevant whether Scotland has the lowest child poverty in the UK. He says he is not concerned about whether it is lower than anywhere else. Is that an argument for more powers for Scotland so that it can do even more to lower child poverty?
I call James Adams, and I would remind the member to speak through the chair.
Thank you. If the SNP were to focus on Scotland instead of focusing on what is going on elsewhere in the UK, we would be in a much better situation. Every child in Scotland deserves the chance to grow up safe, supported and able to fulfil their potential, no matter their background or their postcode.
If we are serious about changing lives, we must be honest about what has gone wrong, what has not been delivered and what now needs to change. The Government motion talks about “ambition”, “progress” and going “further” and faster. The reality is that the SNP has already missed its statutory interim child poverty target, with child poverty remaining at 22 per cent rather than falling below 18 per cent. More than 200,000 children are living in relative poverty.
Does the member have any thoughts on the impact on child poverty, in Scotland and across the UK, of his party’s policy of a two-child benefit cap, which it implemented when it was in power?
I am not here to talk about Westminster; I am here to talk about Holyrood. I was elected to talk about the issues affecting Scotland in this Parliament. If the SNP Government were to grow our economy, we would be in a better situation.
Will the member take an intervention?
I will continue. I have already given way. [Interruption.]
Lloyd Melville—
I have already given way; I will continue. I have already given way; I will continue. Thank you.
—the member does not need to give way.
Although we all share the ambition of giving every child the best possible start in life, ambition alone is not enough. There are measures in the programme for government that can and will help families. The Scottish child payment provides support to eligible families, and the Government plans to increase it to £40 a week for children under one year of age. There are also proposals around school meal debt and further expansion of free school meals.
However, increasing welfare spending alone will not eradicate child poverty. We need to grow Scotland’s economy, make work pay and support parents into secure employment. We need affordable childcare so that parents can work, high-quality education so that children can fulfil their potential, and secure housing so that families have stability. That is a fundamentally different approach from simply measuring success by how much Governments spend. The social security bill is forecast to reach £9.2 billion by 2030-31, yet the SNP is making work less rewarding while expecting taxpayers to fund the soaring benefits bill.
Tackling poverty simply cannot mean increasing spending year after year. It must mean creating opportunities, supporting families into work and ensuring that work pays.
I wonder whether the member can clarify something for me. Earlier in his remarks, he certainly implied, and I think that most people listening would infer, that, in his view, the Scottish Government was not doing anything with its devolved powers to tackle child poverty. He has just cited the Scottish Government using its tax powers to expand provision of social security, which we know is having a material impact on the fact that there are lower levels of child poverty in Scotland than we see elsewhere in the UK. Would he like to clarify what his position is?
The member has taken a number of interventions. We do not have any time in hand, so he may want to consider whether he should take further interventions.
Maybe I am being a bit too generous. I take Mr Arthur’s point and I acknowledge it.
The SNP has made—[Interruption.] I will continue. The SNP has made repeated promises to families and children that it has failed to fully deliver. In 2021, the SNP promised every pupil a laptop or free internet access. That commitment was not properly funded. The SNP also promised free breakfast and lunches for every primary school pupil. That promise has not been delivered in full. The SNP promised free bikes for children of school age who cannot afford them. That was admirable, but only a fraction of that commitment has been delivered. There is a recurring theme here.
Meanwhile, the number of children living in temporary accommodation has reached a record high. As of September 2025, there were 10,480 children living in temporary accommodation. Secure housing is an essential part of giving children a decent start in life. No child can be expected to thrive while their family is stuck in temporary accommodation, waiting for a suitable home or facing uncertainty about where they will live next.
We should also recognise that poverty is not experienced in the same way in every part of Scotland. In our rural and island communities, families can face higher transport costs, fewer childcare options and longer journeys to access services. A national policy that looks good on paper will not work if it does not reach people right across the country. Therefore, although the Scottish Conservatives will support action that genuinely helps children and families, we will not sit here and pretend that the SNP’s record has always been good enough.
If eradicating child poverty really is the Government’s defining mission, it is time for a change in approach. We need a credible plan that tackles poverty while creating opportunity, an economy that grows, childcare that works for families, education that closes the attainment gap, secure housing and employment that provides a route out of poverty. Scotland’s children deserve more than political promises and missed targets: they deserve a Government that delivers.
We move to the open debate.
15:50
Like many of my colleagues who are in the chamber, during recess I was out and about in my constituency engaging with constituents and meeting many local charities, third sector organisations and voluntary groups. I take a moment to pay tribute to the volunteers and staff who work day in and day out to support families in our communities and do all that they can to ensure that children and young people are given the best chances and opportunities in life. Their work is vital because child poverty remains a serious challenge in Scotland. Experiencing poverty touches every aspect of a child’s life, from health, education and the opportunities that are open to them to the wellbeing of their families.
As we heard from the First Minister on Tuesday, eradicating child poverty is the Government’s defining mission. That mission is about building on the progress that we have made and continuing to make a real difference to the lives of families. The policy and spending choices that we make in the Parliament make a difference. Child poverty in Scotland is falling and is significantly lower than across the UK as a whole.
One of the simplest and most effective actions that we can take is to put money directly into the pockets of parents. The IFS estimates that some of the lowest-income households with children are around £2,760 per year better off because of the SNP Government’s progressive approach to tax and benefits.
The Scottish child payment, which is unique in the UK, is projected to lift around 50,000 children out of poverty this year alone. It has been shown not only to have helped to reduce financial pressures on families but to have helped them avoid getting into debt and to have improved their physical and mental health by helping to reduce their stress around everyday budgeting. Therefore, I am delighted that it will be increased again for children under the age of one, with around 12,000 children set to receive support.
Of course, tackling poverty is not just about the money in people’s pockets but about making sure that money goes further. Global events are again leading to increases in the cost of living and it is vital that we do all that we can to ensure that those pressures do not undermine the progress that we are making. Scotland already has one of the most generous cost of living packages in the UK.
That is the solid foundation that the programme for government will protect and expand. From radically expanding childcare, lowering public transport fares, providing free bus passes for our young people and further expanding free school meals to providing support with fuel bills, it is a programme to help to protect people from the cost crisis and ensure that they have the resources that they need to thrive.
There is no silver bullet policy that will eradicate child poverty. Time restricts me from being able to detail the many actions in the programme for government to tackle some of the issues that are inextricably linked to child poverty. I refer to action on affordable housing, homelessness, growing the economy, employment and skills, childcare, whole family support, violence against women and girls and many more. I am sure that there will be more opportunity to speak about those measures over this parliamentary session.
[Made a request to intervene.]
Do I have time to take Willie Rennie’s intervention?
You can take an intervention.
The member mentioned childcare. When she was the Minister for Children and Young People, she made an attempt to close the gap between private, voluntary and independent nurseries and council nurseries. Now that she has a position in the Finance and Public Administration Committee, is she committed to exploring that gap to try to close it, as the Government has tried to do for years but without success?
I am not about to lay out the Finance and Public Administration Committee’s work programme here before it has been discussed with colleagues. However, Mr Rennie has that point on the record and I am sure that some of my colleagues on the committee might well raise it as a possible inquiry.
The Government’s commitment to eradicating child poverty runs through the document like letters in a stick of rock. The election in May showed that the public want and demand that their politicians focus on the issues that really matter to them, such as the cost of living and their children’s future. That is what the SNP Government is doing. The programme details a concerted cross-Government effort to increase incomes, bring down costs and prioritise investment where it will have the highest impact on child poverty. It builds on the Government’s actions that are set out in the tackling child poverty delivery plan, which is estimated to keep 100,000 children out of relative poverty this year. We will build on that foundation and go further and faster so that every child, regardless of their circumstances, has the chance to succeed and thrive.
I call Jack Middleton for up to four minutes. We have no time in hand.
16:01
I thank the cabinet secretary for reaffirming that the Scottish Government’s defining mission is the eradication of child poverty, which is a scourge on a society as developed and wealthy as our own. On his appointment in 2024, our First Minister, John Swinney, could not have been clearer that his number 1 priority was the eradication of child poverty—not a reduction in it, but an end to it. It was a bold and ambitious aim that he knew would not be easy to achieve and that would take time, but that he knew was the right thing to do for Scotland—a sentiment that I think sums up his leadership.
The work of the Scottish Government, which is investing in social security and in the future of our young people with the tools available to it, has led to a fall in child poverty. Across the UK, 27 per cent of children are in poverty; in Scotland, the figure is 21 per cent. Of course, that reduction is welcome and, as anti-poverty charities recognise, it is down to the SNP’s cost of living package, which is the most extensive in the UK. It is using the limited powers that we have through devolution to push the boundaries and create positive change with measures such as the Scottish child payment.
Other speakers from all parties have already said this, but it is a point that needs to be underlined: let us be clear that the fact that one in five children in Scotland lives in poverty and is robbed of opportunity, of chances and often of a long and healthy life because of the problems that their parents face—keeping a roof over their heads and food on the table and keeping the family from drowning further in debt—is not just their problem but every MSP’s and Scotland’s problem, too. A system and a society that allow so many of our citizens to go cold and hungry is a system that does not work at all.
On that point, I welcomed the comments from Andy Burnham earlier this week—shocking, I know—in which he acknowledged that the broken UK political system is failing working-class people and has done for many decades. He said that wealth has not trickled down but has been grabbed and hoarded by a few who were enabled to do that by a system in which services were privatised, communities de-industrialised and resources sold off to the highest bidder. Burnham agreed that the system punishes working families and that their struggles were compounded by the misery of austerity.
The political system in the UK is, of course, broken. My colleagues on the SNP benches have been arguing that very point for longer than I have been alive, yet, astonishingly, they have been told by Labour, Tories and Lib Dems that they are wrong—told to this day that our struggling citizens must remain part of that rotten system, with no option or route by which to ever leave. Scottish families on the edge are punished so that the narrow will of politicians in London and the fiscal interests of the UK Treasury can be satisfied.
The eradication of child poverty is a bold and ambitious mission but an utterly necessary one. To realise that mission, it is necessary to have a bold and ambitious system to match. That can be built only on the ground that an independent Scotland offers, where a new system that truly works in the interests of working people and families can be designed. We must, absolutely, go further and use the tools that we have available just now, but only with the full powers of a normal independent nation can Scotland eradicate child poverty.
16:05
When people think of my Moray constituency, they will undoubtedly think of its beautiful coastlines, its rolling hills and the iconic pagodas that populate our rural communities. However, behind the beauty there is hardship, with one in four children in my constituency living in poverty. Many families are struggling to get by on low wages and are dealing with the higher costs associated with living in rural Scotland, where everyday essentials, transport and energy can be significantly more expensive.
In our towns, it is not hard to see that poverty and inequality exist. Moray’s highest and lowest rates of child poverty are both located in Elgin. Travel just 1 mile from the west of Elgin to New Elgin and the percentage of children living in poverty rises from 7 to 42 per cent. In our rural communities, poverty can be much more hidden, and in those communities, where everyone knows everyone, it can be much harder for folk to seek out help.
There are brilliant organisations in my constituency that support households that live in poverty or those who have short-term financial challenges. Those organisations include Moray Food Plus, Moray Citizens Advice Bureau and the income maximisation team at Moray Council. Although those services and their staff and volunteers are all excellent, they are simply responding to the symptoms of a broken UK economic system that leaves far too many people unable to simply just get by. Therefore, it is right that the First Minister has made tackling child poverty his top priority.
Of course, Government priorities around poverty, growing the economy, improving the national health service and investing in social housing are all interlinked, and we must deliver in each of those areas to succeed in delivering the change that we all want to see.
I have already spoken in the chamber about the transformational potential of the SNP Government’s plans to expand childcare, to tackle the gender pay gap, to support more parents into work and to improve outcomes for young people, so I am delighted that the Scottish Government is providing Moray Council with £1.6 million to get that work started by funding a pilot of flexible after-school activities that are to be delivered in partnership with local clubs and organisations.
In rural communities, the cost of public transport can be a real and tangible barrier to people accessing work and training. Moray was among the first areas to roll out the £2 bus fare cap scheme, and I have lost count of the number of constituents who have told me just how much that has helped them. It puts money back in their pockets at a time when costs are rising.
The Scottish Government’s interventions to tackle child poverty are having a real impact, and it is because of those interventions that Scotland is the only part of the UK where poverty levels are falling, despite our not having the full powers that we need to truly transform our economy.
There is more to do and it is clear the Government is not complacent. By delivering on all of its priorities—to grow the economy, to improve the NHS, to expand childcare and to invest in social housing—this is a Government that can transform the life chances of people across Scotland. I hope that MSPs across the chamber will get behind that plan so that we can truly deliver on the mission to make sure that every child thrives.
16:08
In the nearly 10 years since the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 was passed, we have heard a lot about the eradication of child poverty and about a defining mission and a moral purpose, but we must face a hard truth: we are not going to eradicate child poverty by 2030. We are not even going to meet the targets that were agreed to in 2017. The upcoming review of the targets used to measure child poverty should be a chance to reflect and take stock, but, at the moment, I fear that it is just going to be a moving of the goalposts.
There have been positive steps forward in the past decade—first and foremost, through the Scottish child payment. Cash transfers remain one of the primary means of lifting families out of poverty, but there is much more to fighting poverty in our country than that, and I welcome the fact that the Government’s motion at least acknowledges that. Childcare, transport and affordable housing are all important, yet, on housing alone, there are still more than 10,000 children living in temporary accommodation, which is an absolute scandal, and, more than two years on, Scotland remains in the grip of a housing emergency, with no sign that it is about to be alleviated.
There have been many announcements and many shiny, eye-catching policies, but, unfortunately, many good ideas have not survived the crucial implementation stage. It might be better if the Government and the Parliament concentrated on getting the delivery of one policy right before expanding it or announcing a new one.
Childcare is a key example. With 75 per cent of Scottish children who live in relative poverty coming from working households, we cannot expect to meaningfully tackle child poverty until childcare is addressed. Parents across Scotland were offered 1,140 hours of free childcare for three and four-year-olds, but, as other members have set out, the system that has been delivered does not work for working parents. There are well-documented issues around flexibility, especially for parents who do shift work, and the availability of childminders is a key issue, particularly in rural and more remote areas. As it stands, the 1,140 hours policy does not address families’ desperate need for wraparound care, as well as for whole family support. Simply expanding the system to include children from the age of nine months will not address many of its fundamental flaws.
To tackle the underlying systemic factors that cause people to be stuck in cycles of generational poverty, we need honesty. This cannot be a chance to move the goalposts or fudge the numbers so that things look better than they really are.
I believe that the Government’s desire to eradicate child poverty is genuine, and I firmly share that sentiment. I left a career in teaching to work in politics because I saw what was going wrong in our education system, which is one of the key means by which people can escape generational and cyclical poverty. I saw children coming to school hungry, unable to concentrate in the classroom and, often, with dysregulated behaviour. There was a boy in my secondary 1 French class who could not read in English, let alone in French. Support staff were stretched thinner than ever, unable to cope with a range of complex needs. School budgets struggle to make ends meet, with departments running out of key resources such as pencils and jotters mid-year. None of that is lifting children out of poverty, and I certainly could not fix all of that as one teacher in one classroom in West Lothian.
We cannot fix all of that instantly in this Parliament either, but we certainly have the levers to try to do so and to make far more progress than has been achieved in the past 10 years. The language in the Parliament about having the lowest child poverty rates anywhere in the UK betrays a paucity of ambition that has held this Parliament and this Government back from making greater progress in the past 10 years.
Families across Scotland do not need more warm words, lofty ambitions and changing goalposts. They need us to get on and deliver.
16:12
Bringing an end to child poverty in Scotland should be a top priority for every politician and political party, and I warmly welcome the First Minister making it the Scottish Government’s defining mission. I agree with colleagues from across the chamber that education and employment are the best routes out of poverty, but it remains the fact that there are people who live in poverty for a whole variety of reasons.
I will gently come back to a point that was raised by Julie MacDougall. She is not in the chamber now—sorry about that. She spoke earlier about the overregulation of house building, but the building of better-quality homes surely provides better health outcomes for the people who live in those homes. That is surely a good thing and something that we should all welcome.
The SNP Government has already made great progress in Scotland. We have mitigated the cruel two-child cap that the Tories introduced in 2017 and that the Labour Party kept in place until April this year. We introduced the Scottish child payment, as has been spoken about. We increased the value of the five family payments, which can be worth around £26,000 by the time a child turns 16. We have saved families who take up the offer of free school meals £400 per child a year, and we have expanded funded childcare to 1,140 hours, with plans to extend that further to provide care for children from the age of nine months until the end of primary school. Many of those policies are unique to Scotland. Further, over the past two decades in government, the SNP has spent more than £100 million a year mitigating shameful Westminster policies such as the bedroom tax. That is not taking people out of poverty—that is putting people into poverty, and that is Westminster’s shame.
Reducing child poverty has long been one of the SNP’s main priorities, including through the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017. The briefing from the Child Poverty Action Group for today’s debate says that the latest official statistics show that the proportion of children in poverty in Scotland fell from 25 per cent in 2020 to 2023 to 21 per cent in 2022 to 2025. That is a substantive four-percentage-point reduction. I gently say to Jenny Young that I welcome the fact that that figure has been reduced. That is a good thing, but—my goodness—we still have a long way to go, and the fact that this Parliament has only some powers and not the normal powers of a full independent country means that we are limited in what we can do. That is just the fact of the matter.
The UK had 28 per cent of children living in poverty across the same period. That is far too high for the UK, but 21 per cent is also far too high for us, in Scotland. That is why we need to do so much more. Despite the fixed budgets and the limited powers of devolution, we are doing a lot more.
[Made a request to intervene.]
I would normally take interventions, but I have only up to four minutes. I apologise.
I welcome the SNP’s policies in the area. Scotland is the only part of the UK where levels of child poverty are falling—and it is a good thing that they are falling—but we still have more to do. I welcome the programme for government and I welcome the fact that the Scottish Government is consulting on legislation to establish legal price ceilings on some essential food items, writing off school meal debt, further expanding free school meals and ensuring that families can access breakfast clubs in all primary schools, among other things. I welcome those policies, but I know that we have so much more to do.
I am aware of concerns about children across the country not having beds or having to share beds due to overcrowding and poverty. That is a disgrace and is shameful. We should do better than that. We live in an energy-rich country. We could do so much more. If we had the full powers of independence, we could change the poverty situation for good.
16:17
I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests and declare that I am a serving councillor in Dundee City Council.
There is not much that Dundee does not know about poverty. We have survived recurring waves of deindustrialisation. The jute mills closed, shipbuilding ceased, Timex and Levi’s came and went, and on bad days the scars of lost jobs are still visible. We remember Mrs Thatcher.
The statistics are stark. Six of the eight wards in the city have families living in the areas with the highest levels of multiple deprivation, with all the associated damage that that brings—higher levels of ill health and disability, higher alcohol and drug-related hospital admissions, poor mental health and more than 20 per cent of our bairns living in poverty.
However, that poverty does not define those bairns or their families. Those bairns are as full of joy, wonder and potential as any other bairn, and the job of this Government, above everything else, is to ensure that poverty does not define or diminish who those bairns are, who they can become and what lives they might lead. We in the SNP will do everything that we can to help them to succeed. We are expanding early learning and childcare from nine months to the end of primary school by the end of this parliamentary session, and we are building thousands of new homes.
It is particularly galling to be patronised by people who either caused the problem or have not done as much as we have to try to solve it. In Dundee, we know in our bones the difference that an SNP Government makes. Dundee was one of the first cities to roll out the Scottish child payment in 2021. Since then, the weekly rate has increased—although not by as much as Holly Bruce would like—from £10 to £28.20. It started for children under six and is now paid to the age of 16. This Government will increase the amount to £40 per week for under-ones, and we keep investing in our children. More than 10,000 children in Dundee have benefited from the Scottish child payment.
We sometimes talk about the Scottish child payment as if it is ordinary, but it is not—it is extraordinary. It has not been matched by any of the other three nations. It is a massive strategic intervention. Professor Danny Dorling of the London School of Economics—an erstwhile adviser to the Labour Party—said that the Scottish child payment is the most significant intervention in tackling child poverty in Europe since the fall of the Berlin wall.
Scotland is the only nation in the UK where levels of child poverty are falling. Are we satisfied that we have got it low enough? Absolutely not. Will we keep working on it? Absolutely. Most importantly, this party has never accepted that poverty is inevitable. Yes, we have generational poverty, but we know that two thirds of children living in poverty have a working parent. Charles Dickens would be stunned to learn that we still have the working poor with us.
We also know that poverty is a place that anyone in this room can find themselves in. Anyone can lose a job, have an accident or become seriously ill. Just this week, I spoke to Ellie from Children’s Hospices Across Scotland, who eloquently explained the impact of a child’s illness on family finances, in terms of both loss of earnings and the increased costs of daily living. Having the best cost of living support in the UK makes a big difference to those families every single day.
Finally, we also know that it is not just about the money. As the cabinet secretary mentioned, Dundee is pioneering whole family support across the city. Our child poverty and inequality strategic leadership group will be starting work in our new Greenfield academy. The multidisciplinary team will target vulnerable families with babies and infants under three, because we know that the first 1,000 days of a child’s life are critical to their future development, so we want to get in there and ensure that every child gets the best start in life.
I say to the cabinet secretary that Dundee will make good use of the £20 million whole family support third sector delivery fund—we have already applied for it, and we will be coming back every year. I commend the programme for government and all the work that this party does, every day, to ensure that children in Scotland have the best start possible.
16:21
I welcome the opportunity to speak in the closing stages of the debate. We have heard a number of interesting and thoughtful speeches today, and I thank all those members who have made a positive contribution. I also thank the Scottish Government for making the eradication of child poverty a defining mission of this session of Parliament because, regardless of political persuasion, I do not think that any member in the chamber can doubt the Government’s heartfelt commitment to tackling poverty and improving the lives of children and families across Scotland.
However, I reserve my biggest thanks for those local organisations, community groups, charities, volunteers and ordinary people—such as those whom Holly Bruce highlighted—who make such a difference every single day. They are tackling not only the effects of child poverty but, where they can, its causes, and they are doing so at a local and individual level, often quietly and without recognition. They are the real unsung heroes.
I am sure that every member in the chamber could name organisations in their constituencies that are doing exactly that. I will highlight just a couple in my constituency of Anniesland. Local organisations such as the Temple Shafton youth group, Linkes and the Whiteinch Centre provide invaluable services, support and opportunities for children, young people and their families. Kingsway Community Connections and Brodys Bites cafe in the Netherton community centre have been providing breakfasts free of charge. Many schools also provide breakfast clubs, which would simply not survive without the dedication of parents, teachers and volunteers who give their time to make sure that children start the school day fed and ready and able to learn.
That work sits alongside the Scottish Government’s support for primary 1 to primary 5, and those in primary 6 and primary 7 who receive the child payment. In Glasgow, we have gone further, extending support to P6 pupils last year, and rolling it out to all primary 7 pupils just a few weeks ago. Although I absolutely welcome the Scottish Government’s support, organisations such as those that I have highlighted, and the ordinary people behind them, will be essential to the successful delivery of the Government’s ambitions.
Yesterday, I asked the Cabinet Secretary for Education, Culture and Gaelic how we will
“ensure that children’s voices are … heard when”
we talk about
“raising standards and delivering excellence for every child”.—[Official Report, 2 September 2026; c 37.]
Today, I ask a similar question: how will we ensure that the voices of our local communities are heard? How will we ensure that their experience, knowledge and ideas are placed at the heart of the Scottish Government’s thinking on how we eradicate child poverty?
The Scottish Government’s response to the report on widening the use of people’s panels committed it to ensuring that they become properly embedded in the work of Government, so that they can have the maximum possible impact. I welcome that commitment. Although I acknowledge the financial constraints that the Government faces, I believe that the development of smaller, lower-cost, locally focused panels could be both attractive and achievable, and I urge the cabinet secretary to feed that into Government thinking.
Those who live and work in our communities understand the challenges better than anyone. They know where services are working, where they are failing and, more importantly, what could be done differently. If we are serious about eradicating child poverty—and we are—we need to listen to them.
Next week, we will debate building stronger, safer and more inclusive communities. I hope to expand—if I am able to speak in that debate—on why that principle is so very important to this debate, too.
The Scottish Government’s programme for government is ambitious but, if we are to realise its ambitions, we must ensure that everyone’s voice is heard, listened to and valued. It is only by working together—Government, Parliament, communities, organisations and individuals—that we can realise those aims and, ultimately, share in their success.
We move to the closing speeches.
16:26
As Liberal Democrats, we are here to get things done, so we will work with the Government constructively on one of its great ambitions: to focus on the eradication of child poverty. However, the evidence does not suggest that the Government is anywhere near reaching the targets that it has set itself. Successive First Ministers have pledged to eradicate child poverty yet, despite some positive steps, not enough has happened.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s statistics that have been quoted are looking to the future. The poverty rate for all children is marginally down, from 25 per cent to 23 per cent, but the poverty rate for children in large families went up from 32 per cent to 41 per cent. That is significant, with our birth rate in Scotland plummeting. Furthermore, the poverty rate for families with a baby went up from 31 per cent to 35 per cent.
In this debate, I am less interested in what the Government has done and more interested in what it will do that will have impact. I will focus on two areas: housing and employment. Despite Scotland having some of the most progressive homelessness legislation, Shelter Scotland highlights that a record 10,480 children are trapped in temporary accommodation. That figure has been getting progressively worse over the past decade. Put another way, 39 children are becoming homeless every day. Without a stable home, the conditions in which children grow up are seriously compromised. What is the Government planning to do to close the gap between legislation, associated guidance and the appalling lived reality of homelessness? Reviews and strategies are not enough.
Then there is the matter of employment, which we have talked about a lot today. For many families, employment is an important route out of poverty. It helps to build confidence, pride, ambition and stability for family homes and children. We should not pretend that employment alone is the answer, however, as simply cutting social security and telling people to get back to work will leave people in poverty. There is more nuance to it than that.
Save the Children notes that around 60 per cent of parents receiving universal credit are already in work. Those are working families who are struggling to make ends meet. We need to help people get into work, which is the answer, while supporting those who remain in poverty despite working, and those who are not able to.
That brings me to the Government’s flagship employability programme and its no one left behind approach. More than £80 million has been invested in that approach each year for several years. Between April 2020 and December 2025, it supported 32,005 parents but, of those, only 8 per cent were in confirmed sustained employment after a year. Compare that with Fife Gingerbread, which was part of the funded programme that supports families in low-income communities across Fife: it reported that more than 70 per cent of the people who it supported were in employment after a year. The Government must understand where and why some delivery agencies work and others clearly do not.
Why does the Government not give certainty and stability to third sector organisations such as Fife Gingerbread by giving them five-year performance-related contracts? Instead, the plethora of funding streams bakes in waste and frustration when funding is time-limited and organisations are short of time when it is rolled out. The no one left behind approach does not stand alone. It sits alongside a range of other employability funds and programmes. I counted nine that are distributed through local authorities. The approach is not strategic; it is sporadic, and it fails to deliver value for money. My message to the minister is simple: look to organisations that are demonstrating what works and not for the cheapest option.
Can we make use of the data that we already have? Can we focus more closely on deep poverty—on those who are really at the sharp end? With the data that we have and the advances in artificial intelligence, we know which families are furthest from escaping poverty. Why can we not better target our funding for the child payment by giving more, as necessary, where it will make the greatest difference?
If eradicating child poverty really is the defining mission of this Government and this Parliament, we should measure ourselves not by the ambition of our promises but by the lives that we actually change by taking effective action. Right now, even where budgets are tight, we could do much, much more.
16:31
I hope that we can all agree that this debate has been characterised by strongly held views about how best to tackle child poverty. If I may begin on a point of consensus, I believe that every MSP who has spoken in the debate wants to reduce the chances of a child growing up in poverty. Where we disagree is on how best to achieve that.
The breadth of the debate has demonstrated just how many issues feed into child poverty: the economy, childcare, housing, employment, transport and educational attainment—I think that there was even a mention of net zero. However, when a debate becomes a hotchpotch of so many different ideas it becomes difficult to properly scrutinise any one of them. Having reflected on the contributions overall, I am afraid that the Scottish Government has still not learned the lessons that it needs to learn. In fact, many contributions this afternoon seemed to focus on politics and Governments elsewhere, rather than what is going on right here, right now in our country.
This Government has become increasingly reliant on welfare as a means of reducing poverty. This year, the social security budget is £7.4 billion, and it is forecast to reach £9.2 billion by 2031. The trajectory is unsustainable, and I believe that the Scottish Government knows that. The answer cannot be simply to keep increasing spending and taxes and hope that the problem goes away. We need to be honest enough to ask whether the policies that are being pursued are actually working. Tackling poverty is not simply about how much money the Government spends; it is about providing people with the opportunity to work, families keeping more of what they earn, and children getting the best possible start in life. That is the test that this Government should be applying to its policies. Instead of asking how much more money we can spend, it should be asking whether we are actually changing people’s lives.
Will the member take an intervention?
No, not just now.
Willie Rennie was right that we need long-term solutions, and that involves growing our economy, more investment and more jobs. James Adams was right to say that some policies that the Government announces will receive cross-party support but that there are also areas where the Scottish Government has promised families the world and failed to deliver. I am talking about the free stuff that is not actually free but paid for by taxpayers, such as laptops and bikes; and, now, there is the offer of a free school bag. I wish that the Scottish Government would divert its attention away from the props and focus on the back-office changes that need to happen to close the attainment gap or reduce in-work poverty—changes that could divert more resource to our classrooms, give working families more control over the money that they earn and help families to make the decisions that they believe are right for their children.
I appreciate that that would not necessarily grab the headlines, but governing is not always about grabbing the headlines—it is about results and meeting targets. The Scottish Government needs to stop focusing on propaganda and start using resources better by directing them towards the areas where they would be most valued and where we can make the greatest difference.
The Scottish Conservatives support the Lib Dem amendment because we understand the issues in the childcare sector. I hope that we can work cross-party on that, particularly in relation to the cross-boundary aspect, but also on what happens when families who have twins—or more—are looking for childcare.
If we are serious about tackling child poverty, we have to be serious about childcare and about growing our economy. It is not about what looks good in a press release—it is about what works for families.
16:35
As I close this debate for the Scottish Greens, I want to return to the claim at the heart of the motion, echoed by Clare Haughey in her contribution, that eradicating child poverty is the Scottish Government’s “defining mission”.
It is fair to say that this year’s programme for government will do very little to shift the dial on child poverty. There is plenty to commend in the motion from the cabinet secretary today, not least the continuing of ideas that were put forward to the Government by the Scottish Greens, such as the £2 bus fare cap.
However, if this programme is ambitious for Scotland, I am still waiting to see the ambition. If ambition is to be more than a slogan, it must be reflected in the choices that we make and it must mean taking real action to reduce the costs that families face every day.
For the Scottish Greens, tackling child poverty means addressing household incomes and household costs. If there is one area where we can make a transformative difference, it is childcare, as Jenny Young and Morven-May MacCallum both said in their contributions.
Childcare is not simply a service for working parents—it is economic infrastructure, an anti-poverty measure, a gender equality measure and one of the most powerful investments that we can make in children’s futures.
Parents are currently left spending a huge share of their income on nursery fees, reducing their working hours or leaving employment altogether, and the burden falls overwhelmingly on women. That is why the Scottish Greens have called for a universal childcare guarantee, to ensure that every child has access to funded childcare from six months until they start school. We have proposed extending those hours of funded childcare to all two-year-olds and expanding funded provision for children aged six months to two years. We have also argued for flexibility, so that support can be used either for childcare or to help parents who choose to stay at home during those early years. If the Scottish Government is serious about child poverty, this is the scale of ambition that we should be discussing.
Childcare is not the whole story. Poverty is experienced through the accumulation of costs. It is felt in the weekly food shop, when a family buys school uniform and every time a parent has to decide whether they can afford another school activity, another item of clothing or even another meal.
When Green MSPs secured a £2 bus fare cap pilot in the Highlands and Islands, that was a game changer to help families cut the costs of travelling around. Although I welcome the cap’s expansion to the SPT region from Monday, large swathes of the country are still missing out.
People across my region, in Dumfries and Galloway and the Scottish Borders, who rely so heavily on bus services, have faced rising bus fares for years, all while services are being cut. They are paying more for less. Telling them that they may have to wait until 2031 for a £2 fare cap is too little, too late.
In the past couple of years, I have been really pleased to see the progress that New College Lanarkshire has made in connecting its campuses by bus with the communities that they serve. The college worked with local bus operator JMB Travel to extend the 42 service, which provides direct links to the Coatbridge and Motherwell campuses, stopping at points in the communities surrounding them.
It is vital that there are not only the measures to be able to travel by bus, but also the bus services to colleges at reasonable times to match, because Scotland’s colleges do so much to tackle the challenges that prevent young people and adult learners alike from taking up learning or employment.
Flexible learning and support with childcare and travel costs are all vital anti-poverty measures that colleges that are anchored in their communities can provide.
However, in relation to schools, I remain disappointed by the lack of urgency around expanding free school meals. Free school meals reduce the stigma that Laura Mitchell talked about so eloquently, particularly in rural and close-knit communities. They improve health and educational outcomes and, crucially, put money directly back into family budgets. So, I was astonished to see—as my Green colleague Holly Bruce pointed out yesterday—that the Government is actually retreating on free school meal provision in secondary schools. At a time when too many households are still under financial pressure, we should be moving faster, not slower.
Likewise, stronger action on school uniform guidance could make a tangible difference. No child’s education is improved by expensive branded clothing. Parents should not feel compelled to buy costly items when affordable alternatives are available. Reducing those unnecessary costs is one of the simplest steps that we can take to support families.
When Governments invest in children and families, poverty falls. When they fail to do so, inequality deepens. If eradicating child poverty is truly the Scottish Government’s defining mission, then let us match that ambition with action. Let us ensure that every decision we make is judged against a simple question: will this help to lift children out of poverty? Scotland’s children deserve nothing less than that.
16:41
I thank all the members who have contributed so thoughtfully to the debate—in particular, my colleagues Mark Griffin and Jenny Young. Mark set out practical anti-poverty policies that will help parents earn more, reduce costs and improve people’s life chances, reflecting the approach taken by the UK Government. To Laura Moodie’s point on branded school wear, I say that the UK Government has already banned that in England and Wales.
We must be honest with ourselves: too many people feel overlooked by our politicians and think that debates in this Parliament do not change lives. They feel that the economy is not working for them. If we are to rebuild trust in politics, the Scottish Government must show through its actions that it is dealing with the issues that matter most to the people of Scotland.
Recent polling found that 76 per cent of people in Scotland are worried about child poverty. We have heard that child poverty is one of the Government’s defining missions but, as my colleague Jenny Young put it so well, we are not moving at the scale or speed that we need to in order to ensure that the targets are met.
Children get only one childhood. They cannot wait. We cannot accept a Scotland in which a child’s opportunities are still shaped by the income of the household that they are born into. I am pleased to hear from the tone of the debate that we can all agree on that. I thank Holly Bruce for bringing the lived experience of poverty campaigners into the Parliament today.
I point to the report from Save the Children and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, “The New Story of Child Poverty in Scotland”. It is so important that we change not only what we do about child poverty but how we talk about it.
I thank Heather Anderson, who said that poverty is something that can happen to everybody. It is not a them-and-us situation. We have heard a lot of statistics today, but behind every statistic is a person’s story: a child going without a winter jacket; a parent lying awake at night, stressed about how they will pay the next bill; or a child who knows that asking to go on that school trip, or admitting to their parents that they need a new pair of shoes, is going to be a source of anxiety for their mum and dad. We need to tell that story honestly. It is not a story about irresponsible families; as many colleagues have pointed out, it is a story about the cost of living, insecure work and a social security system that often fails to provide the security that families need.
We have heard that there are particular groups that we need to target more: lone parents, larger families, families with babies, young mothers, families from ethnic minorities and families in which a child or adult is disabled. More targeted support is needed.
We need to put more money in people’s pockets. Social security is one tool; income maximisation is another. Wales has put income maximisation at the centre of its strategy and we should do the same. Too many families do not receive everything that they are entitled to.
Does the member accept that an exceptionally important part of income maximisation is the benefit take-up strategy, and will she join me in calling on the UK Government to develop its own benefit take-up strategy, which it does not have, unlike in Scotland, where we do have one?
I agree with that because community organisations have shown us that income maximisation makes a huge difference. We also need decent, secure employment.
On Jenny Young’s point, and similar ones made by other colleagues, we have to ensure that employers provide family-friendly, flexible work with secure hours, and we need childcare that works for families. That is why I support the Lib Dem amendment.
As one parent told me, childcare costs feel like an issue for everyone. If we want to support parents back into well-paid work, childcare has to work for families. We also need greater investment in holistic, relationship-based family support. I welcome Duncan Dunlop’s intervention on that. The £20 million fund is welcome, but we need to ensure that we learn from projects, that successful approaches are scaled up and that whole family support becomes a sustained part of how we tackle child poverty, rather than making short-term interventions.
We need to make changes. We need to change the way that we talk about child poverty. We cannot constantly tell people that child poverty is too enormous, complicated and impossible to solve, because we risk people feeling overwhelmed and powerless.
The story is that ending child poverty is possible. We must end it. The Parliament has already set out that ambition in law. The target is there, the evidence is there, and we have many of the tools that we need. All that is required is the political will. Michael Marra set out the idea of a cross-party commission, and I hope that all parties take that seriously.
We have a choice. Childhood happens once. We do not need another target review. We cannot retreat from this issue. We need to advance and we need action. That is why I urge members to support the Labour amendment.
16:46
This is the Scottish Government’s third attempt at a child poverty delivery plan. First, we had the “Every child, every chance” plan; then there was the “Best Start, Bright Futures” programme; and now we are invited to applaud the “Bringing Hope, Building Futures” plan. Slogans change; targets do not.
The results have not kept pace with the rhetoric. The Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 was passed with a clear promise that relative child poverty would be below 10 per cent by 2030. The interim target was that it would be below 18 per cent by 2023-24. Ministers have called that their defining national mission, but let us look at the record, not the branding.
The latest figures still put relative child poverty at around 21 per cent—more than 200,000 children. That is more than double the 2030 target. The Government’s own modelling for its third plan projects that relative child poverty will fall only to about 18 per cent by 2030-31. Even in the Government’s own paper, the statutory target will be missed, and it is not a near miss. The plan admits failure in the small print while claiming hope in the title. Behind those percentages—
I ask the member to speak up. Some members are not able to hear her.
I apologise. And behind those percentages—
On a point of order, Presiding Officer. Could you advise the chamber whether members who opened the debate should actually take part, particularly when their own member is closing?
I am not clear which member the cabinet secretary is referring to. Is she referring to a member who is not present?
Yes.
We are aware of that, and we will take it up with them. I am grateful to the cabinet secretary. I would also be grateful if Amanda Lindsay could continue with her speech.
Behind those percentages are families living it every day. Action for Children recorded one mother of three saying:
“We’ve been relying on food banks to get by and been eating smaller portions to make what we have last longer. When my children go into the kitchen to look for food, all I see is their disappointed faces as they find the cupboards empty.”
That is the reality that the Parliament should be judging plans against, not another slogan.
Charities that usually give the Government the benefit of the doubt have noticed. As Mark Griffin stated, in June, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation said that the latest plan fails to set out how the targets will be met as the act requires, and it is open to legal challenge.
The Poverty Alliance, Aberlour, CPAG, One Parent Families Scotland, Save the Children and the Trussell Trust have warned that ministers cannot ignore the fact that they are reviewing part of their targets because they have not done enough to meet them. They say that removing income from the measurement would be like having a speedometer that tells us only the temperature. When even those organisations say that the Government is at risk of watering down its responsibilities, Parliament should listen.
I will give credit where it is due. The Scottish child payment helps hundreds of thousands of low-income households, and investment in social housing can ease housing costs. Those measures have a real and immediate effect and are welcome, but they are short-term tinkering and move people across a statistical line without fixing the reason why so many families cannot stand on their own feet. Free bus travel, breakfast clubs and free school meals reduce costs and the whole family wellbeing fund and employability programmes have a place. Morven-May MacCallum and others were right to say that affordable childcare is an important factor. Targeting the six family types that account for most child poverty is a recognition of reality. However, none of that is the same as having a strategy that creates work that pays.
Reform’s position is simple: the long-term answer to child poverty is for people to have a good job. It is a wage from work—not another slogan or another transfer—that will lift families permanently. Work provides income, routine, dignity and an example for children. Benefits can cushion a shock, but they cannot replace an economy that produces enough decent jobs. Meghan Gallacher, James Adams and Willie Rennie agree.
That is where the Government has failed. Energy costs, taxes and regulation have made it harder to make things and employ people in Scotland. We have seen industrial jobs go, including those in the communities that needed them most. We cannot run a national mission on child poverty while making it more expensive to create the work that ends poverty. Parental employability schemes will not succeed if there are too few jobs to go into or if those jobs do not pay enough after housing and energy costs are met. As my colleague Julie MacDougall said, we must ensure that social housing prioritises local people, especially those with children, who need it most. “No one left behind” is an empty phrase if the industrial strategy leaves communities behind.
Let us be honest about this third child poverty plan: it recycles the mission language; it leans again on social security; it projects a path that still misses the targets in the law that the Government wrote for itself; and it treats work as one theme among many instead of treating it as the foundation. Parliament should not accept another five years of hopeful titles and missed numbers. The Government must not water down its targets to hide failure or pretend that having another delivery plan is the same as delivering. It is for those reasons that I cannot support today’s motion.
In conclusion, if ministers are serious they will put growth, energy costs and jobs at the centre instead of having just another round of income transfers. Reform will back measures that help families to work their way out of poverty, but we will not pretend that slogans are a substitute for a pay packet.
16:53
I thank all members for their contributions today. There have been really good contributions from some members because eradicating child poverty should be an emotive issue for us all.
I will touch on a few of those contributions. Mark Griffin asked whether the Scottish Government is going to meet its poverty targets. We know that that is challenging, but we will meet our targets. He also raised the issue of children living in poverty in temporary accommodation. Our programme for government sets out our plans to go further and to deliver on our intention to end homelessness for good, including through record public sector investment in the supply of affordable homes, by spending £4.9 billion over the next four years to support affordable housing, with at least 70 per cent of that being for social rent and 10 per cent of it for rural and island communities.
Holly Bruce called for an uplift in the Scottish child payment. Our Scottish child payment already provides unparalleled financial help to families, and we are looking at increasing support to £40 a week for children under the age of one. I agree with Holly Bruce, Jack Middleton and Stuart McMillan—if we were an independent country, we would do things very differently. However, as a Government, we have to live within our pocket money from Westminster. This year alone, we are investing £159 million in mitigating the worst impacts of UK Government welfare policy.
Morven-May MacCallum raised the issue of childcare workforce shortages, especially in rural areas. I have been acutely aware of that ever since coming into post and have been having discussions on the matter for the past couple of months. As part of our work to consult on the blueprint for a transformed childcare offer, we will focus on what matters most. It is vital that we reflect the views and needs of rural and island communities. I am grateful to all the stakeholders and childcare regulatory bodies that took part in the rural and island childcare round-table event in Ullapool in March this year.
One of my constituents has written to me about the provision of affordable childcare for twins, because, as we know, parents of twins face not just one cost but a double cost. Will that be part of the Government’s considerations? We know that those families are struggling.
We are in the very early stages of discussing that issue, which I had a conversation about just yesterday. I will be happy to engage with the member on that topic.
Does the Government have an answer on how to close the gap between the funding for private, voluntary and independent nurseries and the funding for council nurseries?
We have delivered sustainable increases in the rates that have been paid to funded ELC providers in the private, third and childminder sectors since 2017. I know that, historically, the issue is one that Mr Rennie raised with a previous minister. Over that period, rates have increased by nearly 88 per cent. This year alone, we are making available a further £13.4 million to enable childcare staff who deliver funded ELC in private and third sector services to continue to be paid at least the real living wage. That is on top of the additional £25.7 million of recurring funding that we have delivered.
We recognise that the gap to which Mr Rennie referred is an issue, which is why the Scottish Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities are continuing to progress the longer-term reforms that are set out in the joint sustainable rates review, including greater standardisation in the rates-setting process and improving the evidence that is available on the costs of delivery.
As the cabinet secretary said at the start of the debate, there are few things that are more important than ensuring that every child grows up loved, safe and respected and is able to reach their full potential, which is why eradicating child poverty is the defining mission of this Government. The contributions that we have heard underline the fact that members across the Parliament share the Government’s ambition of tackling child poverty. I welcome the healthy debate that we have had today.
Our programme for government builds on the actions that we set out in the third tackling child poverty delivery plan, which was published in March, and it sets out our plans to invest in young people and their families so that they can reach their full potential. Those plans include action to support people to learn new skills, to find good, fair work and to increase their earnings, as well as action to transform Scotland’s childcare offer to provide support for families with children from the age of nine months through to the end of primary school.
Costs should not determine the choices that our young people make and the education that they receive, so we will continue to ensure that pupils—
In relation to the extension of funding for the provision of childcare to children from the age of nine months, does the minister recognise that, because we have a finite number of carers who are able to offer such provision, if we increase the number of children who receive provision at a younger age, we will reduce the ratio of carer to child? Rather than a carer being able to look after five children, that ratio will go down to 1:3. As we have a finite number of carers, if a carer takes on three younger children, five places for older children will be lost, which means that we could have a shortfall in the number of workers. That would exacerbate the lack of availability of childcare for parents.
I am slightly confused by the question, but what we are doing is working quite closely with childminders, nurseries and the private sector on how we transform childcare. It will really be up to parental choice. Not every parent will want to put their child into childcare at nine months. It is about giving families the choice of the childcare that they want.
To continue to ensure that pupils and their families do not have to meet the costs of materials for practical lessons in schools—the so-called core curriculum costs—we will provide a further £8 million towards that policy in 2026-27. We also want to ensure that eligible families continue to receive support with the cost of school uniform, and we will continue to uprate funding for the school clothing grant in line with inflation.
Currently, our free school meal programme provides universal provision from primary 1 to 5 and to eligible pupils from P6 to S6, saving those families who take up the offer every day £450 per child annually. I can confirm that, over the course of this parliamentary session, we will expand access to free school meals to all children in primary school.
We are also aware that many families continue to face hardship and difficulties in paying for school meals. While we work towards delivering our expanded offer, we will take steps to address the issue of school meal debt with local authorities, and we will be writing to them shortly to seek information on the school meal debt in their areas.
I want to say a little bit more about our plans for childcare and to address some of the points that have been raised in the debate.
We will publish and consult on a blueprint for a transformed childcare offer, which is focused on what matters most to families. Our ambition is to create a more flexible childcare system that recognises that access to high-quality childcare is not only essential for children’s development but critical in tackling child poverty, supporting household incomes, advancing gender equality and supporting economic growth. In the year ahead, we will continue to fund a range of targeted childcare support for low-income families. Earlier today, we confirmed the first £8.2 million of childcare support funding, which will help almost 5,000 low-income families with the cost of childcare at times of challenge or change.
As the First Minister announced earlier this week, we will work in partnership with local governments to deliver a national breakfast club offer. This year, we will invest £15 million in local authorities to expand and enhance breakfast clubs in schools, and from this time next year, we will invest £44 million annually to deliver free breakfast clubs in primary schools across Scotland. From August 2029, we will provide an after-school and holiday childcare offering for families, which will reduce the cost of childcare at times that we know cause challenge for families. We will prioritise funding within our budget to ensure that that transformation can be delivered.
Eradicating child poverty will require a range of support and action. We must ensure that parents and carers are able to learn, grow and become equipped with the skills that they need to secure and sustain meaningful, well-paid employment. The Government cannot achieve that ambition in isolation. We need to work closely with our partners who are on the front line of our economies and our communities. That is why, during this academic year, we are investing £22 million in the college sector to help parents and carers gain skills that will support them to progress in work and boost their earning potential. That investment of £10 million in the raising income through skills and education—RISE—programme, £2 million in the training access fund and £10 million in the new flexible workforce development fund will support families at risk of poverty by providing essential support, including for childcare and travel, to get into training that fits around family life.
As we begin this new session of Parliament, our commitment to keeping the Promise is as strong as it was in 2020, and a significant amount of progress has been made on that nationally and locally. I am honoured to have inherited the brief to improve outcomes for children and young people who have experience of care. In so doing, I want to continue the excellent collaborative work across the chamber that my predecessor, Ms Don-Innes, so ably led.
: Couldthe minister be specific about where she sees progress for the care-experienced population since the Promise was put in place?
: There are a lot of places where we want to see progress. I know that a few people have said that not enough progress has been made. The cabinet secretary and I are very much focused on ensuring that we deliver the Promise by 2030. I am sure that Mr Dunlop and I will be having lots of discussions about that.
That joint working culminated in the comprehensive Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Act 2026, which was unanimously supported by members across the Parliament.
I say to all members that my door is wide open to sharing ideas and experience so that, together, we can ensure that the 2030 target is a reality. This is a time not for politics but for collaboration through which we can support the delivery of the change that our care-experienced communities require.
Central to the Promise has been our continuing commitment to improve holistic, whole family support. Our whole family wellbeing funding programme has been a key enabler of that system change since 2022. Part of the role of creating and enabling conditions for change is continuing to simplify and streamline our national policy as much as possible. Our delivery partners across the whole family support system have received positively the commitment in “Bringing Hope, Building Futures: Tackling child poverty delivery plan 2026-2031” to integrate the whole family wellbeing programme, the fairer future partnerships and whole family support early adopter areas from 2027.
Literacy plays a foundational and lifelong role in learning, wellbeing and tackling poverty. That is why the Scottish Government has a long-standing commitment to sustaining and enhancing literacy from children’s earliest years and throughout their school education.
I know that time is up, so I close by saying that, despite the challenges that we currently face, the Scottish Government’s action is already making a real difference to families across Scotland. Relative poverty in Scotland is 6 per cent lower than in the rest of the UK. We will do what we need to do to ensure that child poverty is eradicated in Scotland.
That concludes the debate on the programme for government: eradicating child poverty—the Scottish Government’s defining mission.
I remind all members who have an opening speech in a debate that they must also be in the chamber for closing speeches. I am very disappointed that someone who spoke in the opening part of the debate is not even here at this stage, never mind at the start. I expect that person to provide an explanation to me at the earliest possible opportunity.
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