Meeting of the Parliament 05 February 2025
I am grateful to the Government for bringing this debate to the chamber. It would be wrong to suggest that we can end child poverty through education. We can certainly mitigate it, but we cannot end it. It would be a lie to tell the children of Scotland that they can educate themselves out of poverty in a society and an economy that are structurally designed to prevent that. Far more significant changes would be required in order for them to do that.
Of course, education is important for the individual, but it cannot solve the structural problems in our society. Most children in Scotland who live in poverty are in working households. The majority of them have at least one parent or carer who has a job but is being paid such a poor wage that it is impossible for their family to live above the poverty line. We cannot educate that problem away. Someone has to do those jobs. Perhaps, on an individual basis, with greater education people can move on to a higher-paying job. However, the job that pays the poverty wage will still exist and someone will still have to do it. It is wrong that the job pays that wage in the first place.
Those are the problems that we need to tackle. That is why I am proud that, when the Greens were in government, we required any company bidding for a public sector contract in Scotland and those in receipt of grants from the Scottish Government to pay at least the real living wage to the workers who provided the service.