Chamber and committees

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.

First, I say to the First Minister that it feels longer—like 30 years, perhaps—that the SNP has been in power. Perhaps I should have paid more attention in the maths classes that I attended as he was setting out his first budgets.

On his substantive point about Tory austerity in those 14 years, I campaigned against that ardently. I did not want the Conservative Government to be elected, and I did not want Russell Findlay’s support of Liz Truss and others over that 14-year period to be brought up here today and lectured about as though it was some kind of triumph.

However, it is clear that work to fix the foundations and make a change has begun and will continue under the Labour Government.

The cabinet secretary spoke again about the hope-filled approach to the budget, as though it is this Government’s first budget. Where has she been for the past 17 years of budgets, which have often decimated sectors in Scotland and have been particularly problematic for our local government? Let me be absolutely clear, because I think that she is being a little disingenuous. [Interruption.]

The cabinet secretary pointed out to me that we have debated this issue many times. We support the Scottish child payment, but we are clear, as everyone has been in this debate, that it cannot be the only lever that we use to challenge poverty in this country.

Deputy Presiding Officer, I take this opportunity to wish you and colleagues across the chamber a happy new year.

I begin, as I always do in such debates, by stating again that tackling child poverty should be a priority across the chamber and in all spheres of government and that we should take an approach to tackling child poverty that has consensus—[Interruption.]

I am being heckled from the Government front bench when I am trying to speak about consensus. It may help if the Cabinet Secretary for Constitution, External Affairs and Culture listens to the point, because consensus is important and it is also the spirit in which the First Minister began his speech.

Tackling child poverty is a vital mission, and many of us agree and expect that all children, no matter their background, should have security, stability and opportunity as they are growing up. Many of us in this Parliament aspire to that and want to find a renewed constructive partnership to work towards it. I welcome, as I have done previously, the continued new, constructive relationship between the UK and Scottish Governments and local government on the issue. It is important that we put that on the record and call for it to continue.

We may be at the start of a new year, but this is not a new challenge or a new debate.

I will, in a moment.

I was coming on to speak about the down payments that have been made to tackle those issues at the UK level: the raising of the minimum wage, the introduction of the biggest upgrade of workers’ rights in a generation, and the change to the debt repayment levels for people who are on benefits, which will ensure that those who are struggling with debt keep more universal credit payments and is part of the wider work of the UK child poverty task force and the strategy across Government. I hope that all those interventions are supported by the First Minister and the Government. As I have said, I am disappointed that there is no cognisance of them in the Government’s motion.

I give way to Stephen Kerr.

That is helpful. The other areas that I wanted to cover have been touched on, so I will not take up any more time. I hand back to you, convener.