The next item of business is a statement by Shirley-Anne Somerville on the tackling child poverty delivery plan’s annual progress report 2025-26.
As the cabinet secretary will take questions at the end of the statement, there should be no interventions or interruptions.
15:38
The Scottish Government has published the latest annual progress report on child poverty, which provides an update on progress towards Scotland’s ambitious child poverty targets and on implementing our second tackling child poverty delivery plan, “Best Start, Bright Futures”. This final report against that delivery plan not only sets out the wide-ranging action that has been taken in the past year, but offers a moment of reflection on all that has been achieved in the past four years and since the Scottish Parliament set in statute a shared ambition to tackle the scourge of child poverty in our country in 2017.
First, on progress against the targets, the latest child poverty data, which was published in March, reflected recent action by the Department for Work and Pensions to improve poverty statistics from 2020 onwards. That includes making a link to benefits data so that the statistics more accurately account for income from social security.
That latest data shows that 21 per cent of Scottish children were living in relative poverty in 2024-25, with rates having been revised to 16 per cent in 2023-24—the year of Scotland’s interim target—and standing substantially below the UK average. It is important to note that the Department for Work and Pensions will continue to make changes to poverty statistics in the coming years. Although that creates uncertainty in the short term, once the DWP’s work is complete, it will help all of us get a clearer picture of poverty and the impact of our action in Scotland.
I want to look next at delivery in 2025-26. Against a cost of living crisis, continued Westminster austerity and a volatile international situation, the Scottish Government invested more than £3.1 billion in support targeted at low-income households last year, with spend benefiting children rising to almost £1.5 billion. In other words, spend targeted towards children is almost three times higher than it was in 2018-19, having risen by more than £960 million each year over that time. That has enabled ongoing investment in key measures such as our Scottish child payment, which it is estimated will keep 50,000 children out of relative poverty this year. It has allowed us to make free school meals available to more than 360,000 pupils, saving £450 a year for families who take them every day, and to mitigate the United Kingdom Government’s benefit cap, which has the potential to support more than 9,000 children.
It has also allowed us to go even further. For example, we have launched our £3 million bright start breakfast fund, which has created almost 9,000 breakfast club places and provides firm foundations for our new national breakfast club offer. We doubled housing acquisition funding to £80 million, in a move estimated to take between 600 and 800 children out of temporary accommodation. We further empowered our partners by expanding our fairer funding approach, giving 51 third sector organisations multiyear funding to deliver essential services and action on child poverty. As a result of the UK Government’s long overdue decision to scrap the two-child limit, we reinvested money previously committed to mitigation to provide immediate support to families struggling with the cost of living over the winter months.
On our continued focus on delivery and prioritisation of action on child poverty, the report published today details nearly 100 actions that, since 2022, have been completed or are delivering at scale, including more than doubling the value of the Scottish child payment and expanding the payment to all eligible children under the age of 16. The actions also include further expansion of the provision of free school meals and investment in our extra time partnership with the Scottish Football Association, which provides free breakfast and after-school and holiday club places to around 5,000 children. That particular action is making a real difference to families, day in, day out, and is improving children’s lives and outcomes.
I cannot talk about the past year without acknowledging the publication of the UK Government’s delayed child poverty strategy. Although it included the long-overdue decision to end the two-child limit, which has lifted a weight from the shoulders of families across Scotland, the strategy overall represents a missed opportunity to deliver action at the scale that is needed. With the conscious decisions to keep the benefit cap and continue the freeze on local housing allowance rates, the UK Government is knowingly continuing to push thousands into poverty. We will continue to mitigate those cuts for families by investing more than £159 million this year, but we should not have to paper over the cracks left by UK Government policies. That is why we will continue to push for UK ministers to scrap their proposed cuts to the universal credit health element, scrap the benefit cap, end austerity and work in close partnership with us to match our investment and, most important, our ambition.
We are ambitious. In March, I updated members in the chamber on our plans to drive further progress on child poverty in Scotland through our new delivery plan, “Bringing Hope, Building Futures”. Since then, we have wasted no time in taking forward the actions that we committed ourselves to. In just a few months, we have allocated £19 million to local employability partnerships and regional transport partnerships to help improve the availability and affordability of transport for parents and tackle the barriers to work, enabling a wide range of ambitious action that responds to local need.
We have launched our whole family support third sector delivery fund, which seeks to deliver new and enhanced support for families. The fund has received more than 80 ambitious bids from third sector organisations and partnerships; those bids are being assessed, and we will give an update on the awards in the coming weeks.
We have also made a further £8.7 million in discretionary housing payments available to local authorities to help mitigate the impact of the UK Government's local housing allowance freeze. That action is forecast to benefit up to 31,000 children this year, with families already seeing the benefit of that support.
Our delivery plan commits to substantive action over this parliamentary session, from our multiyear funding commitment to devolved employability services and delivering a new national breakfast club offer to investing a record £4.1 billion over the next four years as part of a wider investment of up to £4.9 billion in affordable homes. Together with the steps that we have taken to date, it is estimated that policies in our delivery plan will keep 100,000 children out of relative poverty this year.
However, we are not stopping there. We have heard loud and clear the call that further action is needed, and that is exactly what we are committed to. The Government has come back refreshed and even more determined to deliver for families; to ensure that essential food in our supermarkets is affordable; to introduce a £2 nationwide cap on bus fares to lower the cost of people’s commute; to deliver on more apprenticeships; and to commence a review of employability services in the first 100 days of this session of Parliament. Critically, we have also committed to delivering a transformational national expansion of childcare support to every child in our country from nine months old to the end of primary school by the end of this session of Parliament.
Over the past eight years, the Government has delivered life-changing policies, which is why child poverty in Scotland is lower than the UK average. In that time, our evidence base has grown, thanks in large part to the families and partners whom we have worked with. We have heard and responded to calls from families, child poverty stakeholders, the Poverty and Inequality Commission, Opposition parties and many others, including calls to expand and improve access to childcare, deliver holistic family support, secure funding for the third sector and tackle public debt. We have taken action that is making and will continue to make a real difference to families.
However, many of the policies that we are investing in are not captured in our income-based targets. That can lead to the debate and calls for action being skewed towards increasing social security, even when other policies lead to direct savings for families or drive systemic change across our public services. That is why I confirm today our intention to undertake a review of the types of targets that we use to measure our impact on child poverty. We need to review the targets to ensure that our approach is grounded in the best available evidence, continues to drive the right actions and supports sustained long-term progress for children and families. We need to know what makes the most difference for families.
The review will enable us to use the considerable evidence that we have generated and work with partners to explore how we can use targets to drive focus and action where it is most needed and, as a result, take a balanced approach that focuses on prevention, immediate support and longer-term outcomes that are right for families. I look forward to working constructively with members from across the chamber to inform the review.
This Government remains unequivocally committed to eradicating child poverty and driving meaningful change for families. Our action to date, our new delivery plan published in March and the ambitious commitments on which this Government was elected are testament to that. We have already made great progress in Scotland, and we will continue to go further to ensure that no child’s life is limited by poverty. Supporting families with the cost of living and eradicating child poverty will be the defining mission of this Government, and we are committed to working across the chamber and across Scotland to deliver on our shared mission.
The cabinet secretary will now take questions on the issues raised in the statement. I intend to allow 20 minutes for questions. Members who wish to ask a question should press their request-to-speak button now. Questions and answers should be brief.
I thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of her statement and for the published report, which I am sure will make for very interesting summer reading.
I welcome the announcement of the review of how we measure child poverty. Although I await the detail, I will work constructively with her on that. However, I am afraid that the consensus ends there, because I believe that the best route out of poverty is not a handout but a hand-up with work. That is why the statement will not cut it.
I have an idea that the cabinet secretary could sign up to immediately that would support plenty of hard-working parents, many of whom are in work but remain in poverty, which is to cut tax. Will the SNP finally put its money where its mouth is and make work pay and cut tax to ensure that we tackle child poverty and in-work poverty, which have ripped across Scotland’s forgotten working-class communities for far too long?
Unsurprisingly, I do not agree with Mr Kerr’s assessment of the problem or his suggested solution. We have a progressive tax system in Scotland, which we have just heard about in the previous statement from my colleague Hannah Mary Goodlad. That system allows us to deliver public services in Scotland that are not available in the rest of the UK. We ask those who are on higher incomes—not those who are on lower incomes—to pay more tax; they also benefit from some of the public services that are universally available.
It is important that we look at what is available to those who are on lower incomes and recognise that other people are struggling. We do that with things such as free tuition and free prescriptions that are available to all. We will continue to target our response to those who are in child poverty, while never forgetting that others are also finding the cost of living difficult.
Driving down child poverty is a key priority of the Government and of the Parliament as a whole, but reviewing the targets that the Government is failing to hit does not seem to align with the rhetoric. The Scottish Government’s impact assessment of the child poverty delivery plan is that it will not meet the targets. Key campaigners in the child poverty sector, including the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Save the Children, say that the plan may not even be lawful. Can the cabinet secretary say when a revised child poverty delivery plan that meets the Government’s statutory responsibilities will be published?
The Government does not intend to publish another child poverty delivery plan. I know that our current targets for 2030 are challenging and we are determined to meet them. We are content that there is a credible path to do so, despite everything that is happening in the rest of the UK and internationally.
I go back to what I have announced, which is a review of the type of targets. We are in a situation in which funded early learning and childcare and school-age childcare does not have a direct impact on targets and, therefore, the impact of that on families is not counted. Our whole family wellbeing funding programme, which is about disrupting and breaking the cycle of poverty so that we are changing systemic and intergenerational poverty, is not measured as part of an income-based target. The Government has invested nearly £2.9 million into school meal debt which, again, does not impact on our income-based targets.
Our targets have driven our focus and delivery, but it is important to reflect on the investment that the Government is making in areas that do not impact directly on those targets. It is sensible for us to take a step back to look at what we are measuring, ensure that we are doing it correctly and that we are measuring the impact on people. I assure the chamber that, as we continue with the review that will start in the summer, it will not distract the Government from the delivery of the expansion of childcare, the £2 bus fare cap and the other measures that I mentioned in my statement.
I refer members to my entry in the register of interests and declare that I am a serving councillor on Dundee City Council.
During the previous parliamentary session, families in Dundee benefited from the Scottish Government-funded pathfinder initiative. The whole family support approach ensured that families who were struggling with poverty-related issues were at the heart of decision making and were given the opportunity to contribute towards finding a solution that worked for them. More than 1,200 people engaged with the programme, more than 180 families increased their employability opportunities, and the programme directly benefited 250 children. The pilot has been so successful that it is leading to systemic change in the way that we provide services in Dundee, with a whole family-based approach now being embedded in the way that we will work with families going forward.
I was excited to hear the cabinet secretary’s announcement on whole family support.
Please ask a question.
How is the Government is going to develop whole family support as an approach to eradicating child poverty?
I had the pleasure of visiting the whole family support project in Dundee during the previous parliamentary session. It is making a real difference to families, which is exactly why we continue to invest in our fairer futures partnership and the whole family wellbeing funded programmes, working with local authorities. It is also why we have the new whole family support third sector delivery fund, which I mentioned in my statement.
That type of work, which delivers systemic change and lifts families out of intergenerational poverty, is key to tackling poverty in the longer term. That is an example of why we need to have a review of the type of targets that we set, because the £154.5 million that is invested from 2025-26 is not directly part of the work that is considered when we are measure against targets. That points to one of the failings in the system, which we can improve on.
I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests, which states that I am a member of Glasgow City Council.
The cabinet secretary has told us that the current targets mean that action can be skewed towards social security, but social security increases are one of the few approaches that work, with the child payment bringing 50,000 children out of poverty, as the cabinet secretary has said. Child poverty charities are united in arguing that a £55 Scottish child payment is absolutely essential if we are to come anywhere close to meeting our targets. Can the cabinet secretary assure us that changes to the targets will not compromise work to boost family incomes, and that the £55 Scottish child payment proposal should be given urgent consideration?
I am proud of the work that we have done on social security, and I recognise that it has had a direct impact on lifting 50,000 children out of poverty, as Holly Bruce mentioned. That is exceptionally important. I firmly believe that we should take an approach to social security that is based on dignity, fairness and respect as well as human rights. However, we cannot talk only about social security; we must also talk about the childcare that families require, the assistance that they need to get into employment and the barriers to getting into employment that they face, such as transport or childcare issues.
We need to have a rounded conversation. Social security will continue to be an important part of that, but it cannot be the only aspect that we talk about. Of course campaigners will continue to press the Government to increase the Scottish child payment still further, but I encourage them to assist with the review that we are undertaking of the types of targets and the wider approaches to tackling poverty, which are also important.
As the cabinet secretary mentioned in her statement, the Scottish Government has spent billions of pounds on tackling child poverty, but it remains stubbornly high, with one in five children still living in relative poverty. With 22 per cent of working-age adults economically inactive, more needs to be done to get families out of poverty through long-term employment and job opportunities. We need to get Scotland working again. Will the cabinet secretary look at investing in employability services? Will she also look at the ballooning benefits bill, which is unsustainable? If we are really serious about getting Scotland working again, we need to cut that bill.
One example of when cutting people’s benefits does not help involves the suggestion that we take away support from disabled people, which disabled people tell us helps them into employment. We need to bear that in mind.
I point the member to what is in the plan that we announced before the election and the other work that I outlined in my statement, such as the ready for industry, success and excellence—RISE—initiative that Colleges Scotland worked on with the Government, which increases people’s skills and addresses some of the barriers to employment that they face. I also point to the £90 million investment in employability schemes that is now provided on a multiyear basis to ensure that it has the maximum effect, and the work that is going on to help parents into jobs. On that latter point, I went to Fife Gingerbread this morning and spoke to families and their support workers about the work that that organisation and others do to ensure that women are supported into employment in a way that encourages their confidence, builds their skills and is sustainable and successful in the long term.
I declare that I am a councillor on Highland Council.
In the Highlands and Islands, poverty goes far beyond the material. When a child grows up watching future opportunities being curtailed and seeing their siblings and friends move away for a more prosperous life in the city, the quiet lesson that they learn is that success means moving away from the area that they love. That evokes a poverty of opportunity, which is one of the many reasons why one in five children in my region are in poverty. Depopulation hollows out communities and narrows the horizons of young people. Can the cabinet secretary expand on what the Scottish Government is doing to improve opportunities for ambitious young people in rural communities?
Morven-May MacCallum raises an important point about ensuring that when the Government, councils and other bodies look at the challenge of poverty, our solutions meet needs in all parts of Scotland. The needs in a central belt city centre will be very different to those in the Highlands and Islands. That is exceptionally important.
The member will be aware of the work that the Government has undertaken and continues to undertake on tackling depopulation, by supporting population into the Highlands and Islands and encouraging those in the Highlands and Islands to stay. I would be delighted to continue that discussion with her after today—as will, I am sure, other ministers—because she raises an important point about ensuring, as we move forward with our review, that we apply a rural and island lens to those challenges. I thank her for raising that point today.
I acknowledge the Scottish Government’s ambitious targets to reduce child poverty and the progress that has been made. I have heard that there will be a review of those targets, so it would be helpful to know whether the cabinet secretary believes that the targets have driven delivery in tackling child poverty. Targets can be blown off course by the actions of others, including the UK Government. Perhaps the cabinet secretary can say a little more about that.
Despite what I have said, how can the Scottish Government seek to work constructively with the UK Government to make tackling child poverty in Scotland a common cause?
The targets have been an exceptionally important part of the Government’s work since the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 was passed. They have driven focus and delivery, and have been an exceptionally important part of our armoury as we move forward with tackling child poverty in Scotland. We are seeing that difference being made.
Mr Doris is right to point to the fact that we are not the only actor in this situation, and the impact of the UK Government can be extremely detrimental. For example, I mentioned the local housing allowance freeze and the continuation of the benefit cap.
I was disappointed by the lack of genuine work as the UK Government delivered its child poverty strategy on a four-nations basis. I hope that we can do better in this parliamentary session and that we can meet soon to discuss that on a four-nations basis. I also note the interesting policy proposals in the area that are coming from the new Welsh Government, and I look forward to working with my Plaid Cymru colleagues on the child poverty agenda.
I listened carefully to the cabinet secretary’s response to Morven-May MacCallum, because my question is in a similar area.
InspirAlba works with those who are most vulnerable across Argyll and Bute’s rural and island communities. Some of those communities, such as the communities in Gigha, Tiree and Glenbarr, have been groundbreaking in creating different conditions for community wellbeing. There are examples of community energy that have reinvigorated rural communities and invested in local solutions that reduce inequalities and ensure better outcomes for children and young people. However, less than 1 per cent of Scotland’s energy is in community or local authority ownership. How do we join the dots between economic policies, just transition and child poverty to ensure a robust and sustainable future for all our children and young people, for now and for future generations?
Aspects of Jenni Minto’s questions highlight the real need and requirement for all of us to ensure that our child poverty mission fits exceptionally well with our work on climate action and that we deliver good, green economic growth. Those things are entirely linked. There are powerful examples of that making a difference, and power being put in the hands of communities, which are designing solutions that are right for the people and families who live there.
Ms Minto raises the example of InspirAlba, and members will have seen other opportunities in their constituencies. Some of those opportunities have been taken up, particularly because of the Scottish Government’s community and renewable energy scheme. However, we need to go further on community ownership of renewable energy projects. Ministers will be keen to work with Ms Minto and other members as we take forward that work.
My entry in the register of members’ interests shows that I am a councillor in South Lanarkshire.
According to the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, for every pound spent on local authority welfare rights and money advice services, there is a financial gain of £13 to the people who those services support. Given the importance of partnership with local government and the great unrealised potential of a shift to preventative spending, does the cabinet secretary agree that a return to the core funding cuts to councils, as implied by the medium-term financial strategy, should be ruled out?
I do not recognise Mr Fagan’s description of the financial situation of local government at the moment. I recognise that we are all doing our best with the budgets that we have. Indeed, I met COSLA representatives yesterday to talk about housing and how we can work collectively on child poverty.
Mr Fagan mentioned preventative spend, which is an important area in which the Scottish Government and local authorities can work together with third sector partners. That is public service reform in action, ensuring that we have public services that deliver better, more efficiently and more effectively, which is better for the client involved. Mr Fagan gave some examples of that work in relation to debt and welfare advice, and there are many more examples.
The issue of preventative spend is why I look forward to working with Ivan McKee on the public service reform agenda, because that will deliver for our constituents.
I very much welcome the extensive package of measures that the Scottish Government has put in place to tackle child poverty, as well as the allocation of £19 million for local employability partnerships and regional transport partnerships to help to remove barriers to work.
What more can the Scottish Government do to boost the take-up of employability programmes, especially for those who are furthest away from work, who might also require support in building soft skills?
I saw important examples of that during my visit to Fife Gingerbread this morning, and there are many other examples. We know that fair work offers a sustainable route out of poverty for many families, and it is key to our approach in eradicating child poverty. That is why we are working closely with local employability partnerships to strengthen the employment offer for parents and families, and it is why we are working with third sector partners such as Fife Gingerbread to support confidence and skills.
I heard clearly from the mums and their support workers there about the real difference that it can make for a woman who comes through the door, who has perhaps not been in employment for some time as she has been raising her family, to then be given confidence by the support workers and other mums to develop skills and gain successful employment. Fife Gingerbread is a fantastic example of that work, and the Government is determined to support more such examples in the third sector and through our local authority colleagues.
I, too, refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests—I am a City of Edinburgh Council councillor.
Families who are excluded from social security support due to immigration status are especially at risk of poverty. The Child Poverty Action Group identified that local authority powers under section 2 of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 can be used to provide cash payments to those families without contravening the rules on no recourse to public funds. The Scottish Greens made the same call during the recent election. Will the cabinet secretary commit to providing guidance to all local authorities to deliver those payments, of an amount at least equivalent to the Scottish child payment, to children whose families are in that position?
It is very important that we are exceptionally careful about any programme that is put in place for those who have no recourse to public funds. The last thing that the vast majority of us would want to do is to damage anyone’s immigration status and their journey through the immigration system.
There are limitations to what can be done. The UK Government sets the rules about what can and cannot be given by way of social security; for example, we cannot give the Scottish child payment to such families. However, we work with third sector partners to investigate what we can do, because the failing parts of the immigration system draw people in Scotland into destitution. We are working with the British Red Cross and others to ensure that support can be provided within the powers and limitations that we have at this time.
Thanks to the ambition of our Scottish National Party Government and the action that it has taken on child poverty, child poverty rates in Scotland are substantially lower than the UK levels. However, it is appalling that the Scottish Government still has to spend money on mitigating the UK Government’s lack of action. Will the cabinet secretary update the Parliament on the impact that long-standing UK Government policies such as the bedroom tax, the benefit cap and the local housing allowance freeze have had on Scotland’s progress towards ending child poverty?
The Scottish Government will spend £159 million to mitigate UK Government policies this year through discretionary housing payments and the Scottish welfare fund. The benefit cap, for example, which the UK Government chose to keep in place, impacts on 9,000 children, and many more families are expected to be hit by it following the scrapping of the two-child limit. Much was made of that by the UK Labour Government, but it hit those families with the benefit cap instead. We will mitigate that and assist those 9,000 children.
More than 19,000 children are impacted by the bedroom tax, while the freeze to local housing allowance rates will impact on an estimated 26,000 children this year. The Scottish Government will continue to step in and support those children and families, but the best way that the issue can be tackled is at source and for the UK Government to change its position on the benefit cap and stop the freeze on the local housing allowance.
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