Meeting of the Parliament 05 February 2025
I absolutely do welcome the rise in the minimum wage. I would welcome it far more if the UK Government would commit to keeping the national minimum wage at least the level of the real living wage. It has not yet made that commitment. That being said, any rise in the minimum wage is to be welcomed.
I have said previously in these debates that, too often, we treat teachers as being something between social workers and miracle workers. We expect them and other school staff to solve all of society’s problems. They cannot do that, but schools can play a powerful role in mitigating those problems.
I am really proud of the expansion of free school meals in Scotland, which the cabinet secretary talked about. No child should be sitting in class hungry in one of the richest countries in the history of the planet. I am proud that, through previous budget negotiations between the Greens and the SNP, we extended universal free school meals to all children in primary 4 and P5. There is an on-going extension to P6 and P7 children who receive the Scottish child payment and, as the cabinet secretary said, we have just agreed to extend the measure further, in the first eight local authorities, to pupils in secondary 1 to S3. That means that thousands of additional young people will receive free school meals.
As far as the Greens are concerned, those are steps towards the ultimate objective of universal free school meals from the early years to high school. Having visited, with other members of the Parliament, high schools in Finland, I have seen the massively beneficial effect of a universal, systematic free school meal programme not just on poverty but on attainment, behaviour and the culture of a school community.
Ultimately, tackling poverty requires a significant amount of money and public investment in programmes like free school meals. It also requires tackling the root causes of poverty. Those are not all within the remit or the powers of this Parliament and Government, but we can confront some of those whose decisions are creating that poverty in the first place. We can confront the employers who are paying their staff poverty wages that mean that children are sitting at school hungry. Those are the brave decisions that the Scottish Government can make, and I encourage it to do so. If we are to live up to that promise and to truly eradicate child poverty in Scotland—while understanding the limitations of the devolution settlement—there is certainly much more that we can do to confront those whose decisions are actively contributing to child poverty in the first place.
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