Social Justice and Social Security Committee 18 December 2025
The First Minister has made it very clear that the funding will be used for further child poverty measures. He made that commitment some time ago and, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, that is now forming part of the budget process, which the Government is going through as we speak, and the measures will be announced as we publish our budget. However, the commitment to ensure that the funding is spent on anti-poverty measures is absolutely sound.
We have had letters and correspondence from stakeholders with different views about how the money could be spent, as you would expect. It is important that we assess that against the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s analysis of the money that will no longer have to be spent because we no longer have to mitigate the two-child limit. It is important to recognise that we await the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s forecasts to see what that amount will be, and, as I have mentioned, we will also have to consider the additional expenditure that we must undertake as a result of the further mitigation of the benefit cap and the expected increase in demand for the Scottish child payment, because more people will be eligible for universal credit and therefore eligible for the Scottish child payment following the scrapping of the two-child limit. All that will be taken into account as we develop the budget.