Meeting of the Parliament 05 September 2024
As always when we debate child poverty, I start by highlighting the consensus that—as we have already heard this afternoon—there is no more important mission or goal, and no more important subject that we debate in the chamber.
The goal to eradicate child poverty, as the Government’s motion sets out, is laudable, and members will find no disagreement from those of us on the Labour benches on the need for a national mission in that regard. However, we have to be realistic, because this is a debate on the programme for government, and reflect that the Scottish Government has been saying that it wants to take meaningful action on child poverty for the past 17 years.
Indeed, the First Minister said yesterday that he has been in this Parliament for every single programme for government. I have been in Parliament for only four programmes for government, under three SNP First Ministers; two of them were in the chamber earlier, and I know that the current First Minister has had to go to another engagement.
The reality is that, each time that there has been a programme for government under those successive First Ministers, tackling child poverty has been at the top of the agenda, and yet we know that, year after year, things have not been getting better—in fact, they have often been getting worse. We have had reannouncement after reannouncement of policy, and very little in the way of new and innovative thinking. That is borne out by much of the commentary that we have seen in the past day or so on the programme for government.
We should look at the numbers: 30,000 children are in relative poverty, which is more children in relative poverty than when the SNP came into office 17 years ago. It is 260,000—