Hansard

I assure Miles Briggs that I am coming to that. I have a suggested solution, and I am sure that we will hear many more during today’s debate.

That money does not include our investment in the game-changing Scottish child payment, which we introduced to support families affected by the utter inadequacy of universal credit. By the end of the financial year, we will have spent more than £700 million on the payment. In fact, Professor Danny Dorling, from the University of Oxford, recently commended the Scottish child payment for having delivered

“the biggest fall in child poverty anywhere in Europe for at least 40 years.”

We made it clear in our programme for government that we are committed to reducing child poverty. It is therefore galling that the impact of our investment is lessened, because of the policies of the UK Government. We estimate that 90,000 fewer children will live in relative and absolute poverty this year because of the Scottish Government’s policies, with poverty levels 9 percentage points lower than they would have been without Scottish Government benefits. The latest poverty statistics, which we published in March, show that Scottish child poverty rates continue to be around 6 percentage points lower than the UK average, with the actions of this Government expected to increase that gap still further. This is, of course, challenge poverty week. How much easier would it be to effectively challenge poverty in Scotland, if it were not for the punitive policy measures imposed by the UK Government such as the two-child limit?

It is clear that this Government has very different priorities from the current UK Government—and, it would seem, from any future UK Government. Our priority is supporting children and families out of poverty. Surely everyone in this chamber can agree that the UK Government’s approach to child poverty is severely lacking and that that is perfectly captured in its failure to remove the two-child limit.

Our efforts are further threatened by the fact that the Labour Party now seems to have signed up to that long list of Tory policies. Last year, at the Scottish Labour Party conference, Anas Sarwar said:

“our children’s generation … won’t praise us for halving child poverty. They will ask what we did to eradicate it.”

Well, I know what this Scottish Government has done. Since 2018, we have spent about £1.4 billion on mitigation and the Scottish child payment alone. What exactly can the Labour Party say that it has done, when it cannot even commit to scrapping the two-child cap?

Let us be very clear: keeping the two-child limit and rape clause is a choice—Labour’s choice, and a Scottish Conservative choice, too. Labour’s spending pledges are a political choice. It claims that the financial mess left by the Tories might impede it from doing the right thing. Let me help both parties, but particularly the Labour Party, out on that. How about not spending an extraordinary estimated £205 billion on Trident renewal? How about Labour putting bairns first, not bombs? That is exactly the type of political choice that would help us eradicate child poverty, if Labour had the confidence and the courage to do it.

Amid the chaos of Keir Starmer’s U-turn, the sheer breathtaking hypocrisy of the Scottish Labour Party has now kicked into action. First, we had the ridiculous claims from the Scottish Labour leader that scrapping the policy would “spook the markets”. Then Jackie Baillie swooped to the rescue, taking to the airwaves to call on this Scottish Government to do exactly what her own party had just said it would not do and to scrap the cap. You could not make it up—a call from Scottish Labour to mitigate what UK Labour has been proposing.

In further evidence of that chaotic and hypocritical position, we have the Labour Party’s amendment today. I have to say that I was a bit dumbfounded when I read it last night. It asks us to

“welcome ... the proposal for a New Deal for Working People”.

For the record, I do welcome it—the problem is that Keir Starmer does not. After an avalanche of U-turns this summer, the Labour leader ripped up the plans. The promises to raise statutory sick pay and extend it to the self-employed have gone; the complete ban on zero-hours contracts has gone, too; and as for the promise to raise the minimum wage, quite frankly it looks a bit dubious when the Labour leader has diluted it from £15 an hour to—well, we will see what happens next week or next month.

Later this week—[Interruption.] Oh dear, Mr O’Kane—no wonder you are worried. I would be worried too, Mr O’Kane, if I were you.

Later this week, Labour members will be attending their party conference, and a vote will take place on those hollowed-out policy plans. So what exactly is Anas Sarwar’s position? Is he planning to back his party’s amendment today, and then head to Liverpool to approve a complete U-turn on the plans?

We on these benches and in this Scottish Government remain committed to strengthening workers’ rights. It is very clear that more needs to be done—[Interruption.] I appreciate that Scottish Labour members are finding this uncomfortable, but perhaps they should listen and learn from a Government that is taking action to tackle child poverty.