Chamber and committees

I thank Steven Bonnar for securing this important debate, and I thank members who are present in the chamber for their contributions. We have heard personal stories about the impact on families and on children of a system that is failing.

We have heard only a few stories this evening, but I know that failures have impacted thousands and thousands of families for many, many years—as I, personally, have been failed through the system.

In his opening speech, Steven Bonnar mentioned the failures of the CMS, and I am really sorry to hear about the experience of his constituent, Gerry. That is totally unacceptable. Going through the system can be extremely stressful for families; it is a long and emotionally draining process. As all the members who have spoken have mentioned, the question is about who is accountable. No one ever seems to be accountable for what happens.

Members have called for the CMS to be devolved to Scotland, as its functions are reserved to Westminster. The First Minister has previously said in the chamber that there are currently no plans to establish a Scottish child maintenance service. In saying that, the Scottish Government does recognise arguments in favour of an integrated approach to family support, and we acknowledge that the question regarding future devolution merits consideration.

From Carol Mochan’s speech, it was good to hear that the current UK Government has recognised that the system is failing. It is positive to hear that members from across the parties are willing to work together to ensure that any changes deliver for the families and children of Scotland.

It was interesting to hear about Dawn Black’s experience in the Netherlands—about shared parenting and things being done in a totally different way there, and about how beneficial that is for families and for children. There are so many ways in which we can learn from other nations.

The Scottish Government recognises the importance of a child maintenance system that works for the families who need it. Sadly, as we have heard tonight, that is simply not the case for too many. The reality of the current service is highlighted in the important work conducted by One Parent Families Scotland, in partnership with Fife Gingerbread and the Institute for Public Policy Research Scotland. Those organisations engaged with parents with lived experience to understand the challenges that they faced, and their final report, which was published in October last year, sets out recommendations for transformational change that could help improve the financial security of children and lone-parent families.

The scale of what can be achieved is clear. IPPR Scotland estimates that 20,000 Scottish children could be lifted out of relative poverty if families were properly supported to navigate the child maintenance system and to access the money that they are owed.

Responsibility for the child maintenance service rests solely with the UK Government at the moment, and the failings that have been highlighted are that Government’s alone. While the Scottish Government has welcomed the UK Government’s recognition of the need for reform, as set out in the child poverty strategy, the actions that have been committed to fall short of the transformation that stakeholders have called for.

We are not content to sit idly by and point fingers at the failings of Westminster, so the Scottish Government is taking action. This year we are investing more than £270,000 in a new child maintenance project, led by One Parent Families Scotland and Fife Gingerbread. That project is helping to provide information and advice nationally to train front-line advice workers and to deliver specialist advice for families with complex circumstances, including those experiencing domestic abuse.

We are also investing more than £99,000 over the next two years, through the child poverty practice accelerator fund, to build on the innovative work taken forward by Fife Council and Fife Gingerbread. Our investment is enabling learning from that project to be expanded into Edinburgh, which will help to improve the support that is available to families, including by training more financial inclusion and family support workers to feel more confident about discussing child maintenance.

In addition to mitigating the failings of the child maintenance service, we are investing £159 million this year to mitigate the effect of UK Government welfare policies, including the benefit cap, the bedroom tax and the freeze on local housing allowance rates. We have repeatedly called on the UK Government to scrap those cruel policies, and we have again urged the chancellor to take action at the budget next month.

This mitigation forms part of the much broader action that we are taking to drive progress on our defining mission of eradicating child poverty. The “Bringing Hope, Building Futures: Tackling child poverty delivery plan 2026-2031” sets out concrete action to increase families’ incomes, reduce the cost of living, and support children and their families to thrive. That includes investing £40 million to deliver new transport and skills support for parents to help boost their earnings. It includes continued investment in our five family payments, which provide unparalleled financial support to families, and it strengthens them by increasing our Scottish child payment to £40 for children under the age of one. The plan also includes action to tackle the cost of living crisis, including through continued investment in funded early learning and childcare and free school meals.

Our action is making a real difference and is estimated to be keeping 100,000 children out of relative poverty this year. The Scottish Government recognises the significant challenges and failings in the current child maintenance service and the impact that transformational change could have on families across the country. We have repeatedly called on the UK Government to raise its ambition and deliver the change that is needed.

I really welcome this debate. I assure members that we will ensure that learning is shared from the projects that we are funding and that we will work constructively with the UK Government to reflect the experiences of families in Scotland.

Meeting closed at 18:12.

The Scottish Government totally recognises how vital early learning and childcare is in rural and island areas, in relation to both giving children the best start in life and supporting families to work. We recognise that the provision of childcare is a key factor in allowing people in rural and island communities to enter and sustain training or employment and to start a business.

As members know, next year, a blueprint consultation will be launched on how to roll out the expansion of childcare from nine months to the end of primary school by the end of this parliamentary session.

We are committed to families in rural areas accessing high-quality childcare that meets their needs, with near-universal take-up of our existing offer of funded early learning and childcare for three-year-olds and four-year-olds.

As we set out in our programme for government, we will transform our childcare offer to provide a flexible system of support for children from nine months to the end of primary school. As we develop our plans, we will continue to engage closely with families, childcare providers, stakeholders and partners to ensure that the transformation delivers for families in rural and island communities.

I saw at first hand the benefits of outdoor play for young children during a visit to Little Bugs nursery in South Queensferry earlier this month. It was impressive to see so many kids thriving in an outdoor environment.

The national standard for funded early learning and childcare ensures that outdoor play is a part of children’s everyday experience of funded ELC, and we have worked with the sector to develop the “Out to Play” guidance, which supports high-quality outdoor experiences. The latest data shows that children in ELC settings across Scotland spend, on average, 39 per cent of their time outdoors. We will continue to work with the ELC sector to support and promote outdoor play.

: 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.

Here I was, thinking that the member had a genuine concern and a query about UK Government funding being ceased for places of worship. As I said, Historic Environment Scotland is doing what it can, given that the UK Government will not give any further funding. We will continue to do that.

Officials in the agency have led our response to the issue, working closely with the sector and chief social work officers. The agency has worked at pace to gather data on the scale of the issue and to put forward options for consideration by stakeholders with a role in securing suitable care placements for children and young people who are unable to remain with their families.

We now have an agreed set of actions that can support the immediate retention of capacity and options that will support longer-term improvements to capacity. The agency will oversee the delivery of those actions and report directly to me, to ensure that I am updated on progress.

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—

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.

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.