Meeting of the Parliament 18 April 2023
A YouGov poll for StepChange Debt Charity has found that one in seven Scottish adults has £20 or less to live on after paying for essentials each and every month. That is a sobering thought as we debate child poverty. The low level of UK benefits, soaring inflation and food costs and crippling energy costs are among the clear and obvious factors that have led to that dreadful statistic. As we know, the cost of living crisis will hit children the most, with nearly one in four children in our nation living in poverty.
It matters that the policies of the UK Government—sometimes botched policies such as the Truss-Kwarteng budget, and sometimes deliberate acts of harm such as Brexit, the levels of UK benefits and the sanctions regime—have fuelled that cost of living crisis and have impacted detrimentally on child poverty. More consensually, it also matters what we do in this place, in Scotland’s Parliament, to tackle child poverty.
That is why the Scottish Government has placed our Scottish child payment front and centre in getting cash directly into the pockets of the poorest families in our nation. Around 387,000 children are eligible for the payment this year. Modelling work from last year estimates that the £25 per week per child—a £100 payment per child in a low-income family, every four weeks—will lift 50,000 children out of poverty and will reduce relative poverty by 5 per cent. I shudder to think what poverty levels would look like in Scotland right now if it was not for the Scottish payment.
It is telling that the many briefings from the third sector organisations, which are very welcome in preparation for this afternoon’s debate, focus on calls for a further increase in the Scottish child payment. That is a clear acknowledgement of the power and effectiveness of the SNP’s Scottish child payment and of the real difference that it makes to many families in my constituency of Glasgow Maryhill and Springburn and right across Scotland. They call for an increase because it works.
Ahead of the launch of our new Scottish child payment, the call from the third sector was for a non-targeted £5 per week. The Scottish Government engaged with the third sector and, today, we have not a non-targeted universal benefit but a targeted benefit of £25 per week. When the Government works with the third sector, we get a good, positive outcome and real success.
I therefore warmly welcome the plans for an anti-poverty summit. It will not just be words; it will deliver action, because the evidence is there from what the Scottish Government has done previously. Just as our Scottish Government listened to those with lived experience of poverty and the third sector organisations that support them and delivered the transformational Scottish child payment in the first instance, we must do so once again, sharing ideas and suggestions about how we can improve lives that are blighted by poverty.
We have done lots of things other than the Scottish child payment, but I am not going to list those, because any summit or cross-party discussion must surely be about what we would do next. We do not have a bottomless pit of cash so, if we had cash, how would we spend it? Here are some ideas.
We know that there are calls for the Scottish child payment to go up to £40 per week. Is that affordable? If it is not affordable, should we look at a summer supplement? We know that the summer months of July and August are cripplingly difficult for low-income families, so should we have a summer supplement for the Scottish child payment in July and August? We should discuss that idea at the summit and beyond.
I am a dad. I am fortunate that I can afford to clothe my children. However, I know the importance of the child clothing grant in giving me a school uniform to wear when I went to school.
I also know how often kids rip their trousers or grow out of their clothes, so it is welcome that the clothing grant has increased to at least £120 for children at primary school, and at least £150 for secondary school students. However, is once a year enough? Do we have to think about a second clothing grant? I am not saying where the money comes from for that but am suggesting ideas for spending money if it was available.
We cannot spend the same pound twice. Let us have a frank discussion about where the best investment would be to deliver the outcomes that we want in tackling child poverty.
What about free school meals? They are universal for P1 to P5 and are soon to be universal for P6 and P7. I say to the cabinet secretary that we have to deliver on that as soon as possible. If some local authorities are ready to go now but others are not, can those that are ready be allowed to go now? If they can find that cash now, why should they have to wait? In addition, what about secondary schools? What are we going to do there in the future? We should think in the medium to long term for those, too.
Finally, in the time that I have left, I mention the poverty-related attainment gap in education. We have to start looking at outcomes as well as educational qualifications. I am therefore delighted to see record positive destinations for kids from low-income backgrounds—in fact, for kids right across the country. I am delighted that we are ahead of schedule in getting the 20 per cent of children from the most deprived backgrounds represented in our higher education system. We are ahead of schedule in doing that for 2030. However, the role of colleges is crucial, and their funding is under pressure. I will leave it there, Presiding Officer. That is something else that we have to look at.