Hansard

When I became First Minister, I made it abundantly clear that the foremost priority of my Government would be the eradication of child poverty in Scotland. I reiterate that commitment today, at the start of 2025.

There can be no acceptable number of children living in poverty—not in a prosperous, modern society such as ours. Poverty limits a child’s opportunity, their health and their wellbeing. Its wider impacts stretch across every aspect of our community and span generations. It shackles our economy and strains our public services. Put bluntly, it holds us all back.

My Government will be relentlessly focused on acting to meet the ambitious targets that were agreed unanimously in Parliament, and I have committed every aspect of my Government to achieving them. Indeed, our action is already making a real difference to the lives of families. Modelling that was published in February estimates that the Government’s policies will keep 100,000 children out of relative poverty in 2024-25, with relative poverty levels 10 percentage points lower than they would have been otherwise. That includes keeping an estimated 60,000 children out of relative poverty through investment in our Scottish child payment. That payment is available to families in Scotland only; such a payment is not available in England and Wales. That is a key commitment of, and a key policy delivered by, the Scottish Government.

Child poverty is a deeply entrenched systemic problem, and it continues to affect too many children in Scotland. We must not only sustain our efforts but redouble them, and we must pioneer new and innovative ways of acting to achieve the aims that we have all agreed as a Parliament.

In the programme for government in September and in my November speech on my approach to government, I outlined how I propose to use the powers of Government to tackle the issue. It is not through quick-fix sticking plasters; I favour tackling the root causes of child poverty by working collaboratively within our communities, from the bottom up.

This year’s budget makes that approach possible. In it, we commit more than £3 billion to a range of actions to tackle poverty and the cost of living for households. Yesterday, I described it as a budget of “delivery and hope”. I said that because it delivers the things that make the biggest difference to people today, and it lays the foundation for a hopeful future in which Scotland can grow and prosper for years to come.

Because family poverty is child poverty, our approach to delivery addresses the issues that have a direct and immediate impact, day in and day out, on families in Scotland. That begins with the essentials: warm, safe homes, good jobs and money in people’s pockets.

Next financial year, we will invest £760 million to boost delivery through the affordable housing supply programme. That will support housing providers to deliver at least 8,000 properties for social and mid-market rent and low-cost home ownership. It will help to tackle the housing emergency by supporting immediate actions that will return existing housing stock to use, through addressing voids and increasing acquisitions, and it will ensure that families have secure and affordable homes in which to raise their children. We will also invest an additional £4 million to enable local authorities, front-line services and relevant partners to prepare for the new homelessness prevention duties. Also, because the best and most sustainable route out of poverty is good employment, we are investing up to £90 million in the delivery of devolved employability services. That includes specific funding to continue supporting parents to enter employment and to embed child poverty co-ordinators in local authorities.

We are investing more than £2.6 billion to support public transport and to make our transport system available, affordable and accessible to all, helping to connect parents to employment, training and skills opportunities and the services that they need to navigate their way out of poverty. That includes providing £415 million for concessionary bus travel, which enables access to free bus travel for 2.3 million people across Scotland.

The cornerstone of our support for families, however, is our investment in social security. Many families are struggling with the cost of living, and the budget provides them with immediate support for the day-to-day cost of living. We have made the decision to invest roughly £6.9 billion in benefits expenditure. That is almost £1.3 billion over and above what Scotland receives from the United Kingdom Government for social security, and it includes £644 million in benefits and payments that are available only here in Scotland and are not available in any other part of the UK.