Social Justice and Social Security Committee 18 December 2025
Thank you very much, and good morning, convener. Eradicating child poverty is the Scottish Government’s top priority and a national mission for us all, and I am glad to see the UK Government’s renewed focus on that critical issue, albeit later than it had envisaged.
Although there is action to welcome, including the scrapping of the two-child limit following unrelenting pressure from the Scottish Government and many charities, I am clear that more is required to support families.
There was initially very positive engagement with the co-chairs of the UK Government’s child poverty task force in October 2024 and an interest in developing a truly four-nations approach. However, I am sad to say that that did not materialise. There was a lack of meaningful engagement from UK ministers and, despite sharing learning and experience from Scotland, UK ministers unilaterally decided to end four-nations engagement on the strategy earlier this year.
Despite my repeated attempts, no ministerial engagement took place between May and December as the strategy was finalised. It is deeply disappointing that the UK Government failed to foster the consensus and partnership across Governments that was initially agreed and to seize the opportunity available to us all. Instead, a strategy has been developed that sets no statutory targets for poverty reduction, immediately weakening accountability.
A broad range of measures have been outlined in the strategy, but that mostly represents a consolidation of previously announced policies rather than a commitment to further action. As the Poverty and Inequality Commission and others have highlighted, the strategy does not go far enough to support families with no recourse to public funds, it fails to remove the benefit cap and it continues to freeze the local housing allowance rates. Those are all conscious decisions that the UK Government has taken.
The UK Government’s own analysis shows that relative poverty rates are estimated to remain broadly stable across the UK as a whole, despite the measures in the strategy, with 4.3 million children expected to live in poverty by the end of the decade. That is the scale of the UK Government’s ambition—that poverty remains broadly stable.
In contrast, there is already clear evidence of the impact of the Scottish Government’s approach. Child poverty rates have fallen in Scotland only because we have taken bold action, such as the Scottish child payment, which is successfully keeping children out of poverty. Our action is making a difference, with the lowest-income households with children estimated to be £2,600 a year better off this year as a result of Scottish Government policies.
I will continue to urge the UK Government to go further and to match our ambition and action. As it does so, we remain committed to working with and supporting the implementation of the strategy in Scotland.
As the committee knows, the Scottish Government is in the process of developing our third child poverty delivery plan. We have committed to reinvesting the money that is committed to the two-child limit payment to tackle child poverty. We will set out the details of our investments in the Scottish budget, which will be published on 13 January 2026.
In conclusion, we will continue to review the UK Government strategy and the written evidence provided by the secretary of state, which we did not have the opportunity to look at in detail before giving evidence today. We will look at what that means for Scotland and for our next delivery plan, which is due for publication by the end of March 2026. The Scottish Government is committed to doing all that we can to eradicate child poverty and the UK Government must do so too; the strategy must be its crucial first step and not the only step.
I am grateful for the opportunity to be with you today and to answer any questions that the committee may have.