Chamber and committees

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I seek your guidance regarding the statement. It appears that, once again, the content of a statement has appeared in the media before the statement has been made to Parliament—indeed, I note that the Scottish Government appeared to have an embargoed press release on its website at one minute past midnight.

I raise that because this is not the first time that issues such as the winter heating payment and broader matters have been pre-briefed to the media. If the Government contends that no detail in the statement was not already in the public domain, that begs the question of what point there is to having the statement at all. I believe the principle is that this chamber, and not the media, should be the place where statements are made, so I would appreciate your guidance on the matter, Presiding Officer.

I appreciate what you are saying about the move to a steady state. We know that the main benefit that still needs to be devolved is employment injury assistance, and we have just touched on the Government’s intention to mitigate the two-child limit. We had this discussion before the Christmas break, but that decision was taken a week and a day before the budget was announced—you may want to correct me if I am wrong about that. To what extent has that decision been factored in, given the potential delay that could be caused to the closure of the programme? Was planning done prior to that decision being made? Were projections considered on the impact of the decision on the wider programme?

I have a question about future changes. As you rightly point out, it is for any Government to decide what to do when more mainstream social security becomes devolved. I noted that the Deputy First Minister made some public comments yesterday about the two-child limit, suggesting that the reason why it had not previously been considered was that the DWP was not willing to give information.

Regarding long-term planning for social security, we have had a discussion about costs and we know that there will be structures for that. Has the cabinet secretary been planning that for some time? Has she considered the preparation of some of that? That seems to be what the Deputy First Minister was alluding to yesterday. Within that, has the cabinet secretary previously asked the DWP for those powers?

The point is that the Labour Government has been in power for six months but the two-child limit existed for many years before that. We also know that the Scottish child payment came in in 2021, so my question to you is whether you asked for those powers at any point.

Good morning, cabinet secretary and officials. I will move on to the theme of planning and administration of social security in Scotland.

The gateway review in February 2024 concluded that

“successful delivery appears feasible but significant issues ... exist requiring management attention”.

In your view, have those issues been addressed? What progress has been made?

Finally, regarding the Deputy First Minister’s comments yesterday, is she confused about the position? She seemed to think that the powers had been asked for previously, but you are saying they had not been asked for.

If Mr Swinney allows me to make a little progress, I will allow him back in.

The point that I was moving on to make is about the length of time that we have spent looking at the issues. The Government has set its motion in the context of the budget. For many months, the First Minister and his front bench sought to project the budget as though it was the first budget of a new Government. However, in 2025, we enter the 18th year of the SNP Government being in power. Indeed, the current First Minister started passing budgets when I had not long left secondary school. He has had those wide-ranging levers of power for almost two decades, including as finance secretary, as education secretary and as Deputy First Minister before he came to the office that he now holds.

We must consider that, despite the three First Ministers in my short time in this Parliament and four across the SNP’s almost 20 years in Government all stating that child poverty is the top priority, the most recent estimates show that 30,000 more children are in poverty now compared with when the SNP came to power in 2007.

On the First Minister’s point about the legally binding targets, alarm bells are ringing with regard to where he has had the power to make changes. Indeed, in its report last year, the Poverty and Inequality Commission said that progress has been

“slow or not evident at all”

and it predicted that it is now

“improbable”

that those legally binding child poverty targets will be met.

We must reflect on that, because we are almost at the 20-year mark of the SNP having the levers that I spoke about. We have to be honest: one budget is not going to provide the change of approach and direction that is required to meet the scale of the challenge before us.

I put on record Scottish Labour’s pride in and clear support for the UK Labour Government’s ending the era of austerity and ensuring that there is additional money coming to the Scottish Government. The investment of £5 billion into the Scottish Government’s budget is vitally important and should be recognised. I am disappointed that the Scottish Government did not see fit to recognise that in its motion.

There have also been other welcome down payments on tackling child poverty at a UK level, which I will speak about after I have taken an intervention from the First Minister.

Is Russell Findlay genuinely trying to get the rest of the chamber to agree that he, as an ardent supporter of Liz Truss, should be trusted on how to support and grow the economy and lift people out of poverty? Is he genuinely asking us to take him seriously on that point?

I will, Presiding Officer.

Given that, clearly, Russell Findlay has some kind of idea that we, on this side of the chamber, should all be listening to about how to reduce child poverty, deal with the issues and invest in public services, perhaps Stephen Kerr and colleagues might tell us how they would pay for and support public services, because they did not do so as they drove them into the ground during their 14 years.

Presiding Officer, I am very conscious now that I have taken a number of interventions, and I will bring my remarks to a peroration. It is clear that we need to take action across our public services in order to reduce child poverty. It is clear that health, education and housing are all issues in which the Scottish Government has, after all that time in Government, failed to make the substantive changes that are required to tackle the root causes of poverty. It is clear that we must take a rounded view of poverty in all its facets.

It cannot be for just the social security system to support people. It has to be about good work, well-paid jobs, support to get into work, a national health service that is there when people need it, and the family support that people require through social work and other council services. All those things are important, and they need to be backed up by a strong social security system that is there when people need it.

One budget will not make the difference—that is clear—and the opportunity to take a new direction on those issues has not been and will not be taken by this Government. Only a new Government in 2026 can provide that.

I move amendment S6M-16003.3, to leave out from first “notes” to end and insert:

“agrees that child poverty should be a national mission for the Scottish Government and more widely across the Parliament, but deeply regrets that, after almost 18 years of a Scottish National Party (SNP) administration, there are 30,000 more children in poverty; acknowledges that child poverty rates across the UK have risen under the economic mismanagement of the previous UK Conservative administration; recognises that Scotland has its own legally binding child poverty reduction targets, which the SNP administration is likely to miss, despite successive First Ministers declaring action on child poverty to be a priority; acknowledges an additional £5 billion of investment in Scotland as a result of the UK Labour administration’s Budget; regrets that the SNP administration has had to use its draft Budget for 2025-26 to correct many of the mistakes that it made in its Budget for 2024-25; is deeply concerned by the Scottish Government’s decision to cut measures that act as barriers to poverty; agrees that there is a need to take a multi-faceted approach, and therefore welcomes the work of the UK Labour administration to strengthen workers’ rights, review universal credit, build a fairer social security system, and deliver a pay rise for 200,000 of the lowest-paid people in Scotland with a genuine living wage; welcomes the establishment of a cross-government Child Poverty Ministerial Taskforce by the UK Government; encourages the Scottish Government to work collaboratively to tackle the root causes of poverty across Scotland, and recognises that, to end poverty, action needs to be taken to get the economy moving, to get public services working, and to create more, decent well-paid jobs.”

Of course it is the Parliament’s responsibility to hold the targets in our hands. It was agreed across the chamber—prior to my being here—that they should be put into law, so it is important that we all work to deliver them. I will say more on the targets and my concern about the Government’s leadership on them, given that the Government has the tools, the powers and the levers to drive much of that, as I progress in my speech.