Meeting of the Parliament 26 June 2019
I thank the cabinet secretary for early sight of her statement. Scottish Labour will, of course, require to scrutinise the supplementary papers and the progress report in due course.
As we have consistently put the case for interim measures prior to the income supplement implementation date of 2022, we welcome the fact that the Government has responded with proposals to put in place, during this parliamentary session, payments to families with children who are aged under six years. However, the cabinet secretary must recognise that the ambitious target to reduce child poverty significantly, which was set by the Parliament in 2017, will not be met by this new measure alone. We remain concerned for all other children who are living in poverty right now.
In 2017, when Parliament considered the Child Poverty (Scotland) Bill at stage 3, the Scottish Government said that we needed to
“find ways to do more than just mitigate austerity and welfare reform”—[Official Report, 8 November 2017; c 63.]
Since the cabinet secretary has mentioned the two-child policy, I ask her why she will not take steps to mitigate the so-called “rape clause”, which, in her statement, she called a “despicable policy”.
Given that the Resolution Foundation has predicted that child poverty is on course to continue rising over the next five years, and that it is on course to hit a 20-year high of around 29 per cent by 2023-24, what further substantial measures will the Government put in place to ensure a dramatic reduction in child poverty over the next year?