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The next item of business is a statement by Shirley-Anne Somerville on the tackling child poverty delivery plan annual progress report 2024-25. The cabinet secretary will take questions at the end of her statement, so there should be no interventions or interruptions.
14:25
The Scottish Government has today published its annual progress report on child poverty, setting out the detail of our continued implementation of the programme that was set out in the “Best Start, Bright Futures: Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan 2022-2026” document and reporting against the interim child poverty targets that were agreed unanimously by this Parliament.
In the past year, the Scottish Government has faced some of the most challenging fiscal circumstances in the history of devolution, but we know that the pressures on families who are in poverty have been greater still. The report highlights that, despite those challenges and the continued detrimental impact of United Kingdom Government decision making, we are making real progress in Scotland, which is changing the lives of families. We are committed to building on those firm foundations and remain unequivocal in our commitment to meeting the 2030 targets and to tackling the scourge of child poverty in our society.
Looking first at the interim target, statistics that were published in March and are presented in today’s report show that, despite significant challenges, levels of both relative and absolute poverty reduced in 2023-24. Although the long-term trend broadly remains stable, the proportion of children who lived in relative poverty in 2023-24 was the lowest since 2014-15, while the proportion of children who lived in absolute poverty was the lowest in 30 years. The rates of both relative and absolute poverty stood nine percentage points below the UK average in 2023-24. To put that in context, were rates in Scotland to be the same as they are in the UK, that would be equivalent to 90,000 additional children in poverty.
Although the Joseph Rowntree Foundation predicts that child poverty will rise in other parts of the UK by 2029, it highlighted that policies such as the Scottish Government’s Scottish child payment and our commitment to mitigate the two-child limit
“are behind Scotland bucking the trend”.
Although our policies are having to work harder than ever to make a difference, modelling that was published by the Government in March reinforced the significant impact that those policies are having. It is estimated that the lowest-income families will be an average of £2,600 better off this year as a result of our policies, with that figure increasing to an estimated £3,700 by the end of the decade.
As is set out in the report, there is no single reason that the interim targets have not been met. A wide range of factors, including the headwinds of more than a decade of UK Government austerity, Brexit and the Covid pandemic, have all made meeting the interim targets particularly challenging. However, data demonstrates the significant impact of UK Government policies, which have worked against us—not least the two-child limit, which has caused poverty rates to rise in larger families, while they have fallen for families with one or two children.
It is deeply disappointing that the interim targets have not been met. However, we have made progress, and we will continue to build on those foundations to reach the 2030 targets.
On delivery in the past year, 2024-25 saw some of the most challenging fiscal circumstances in the history of devolution, as the outgoing chancellor delivered unfunded tax cuts at the expense of public services and support for struggling families. Combined with the failure to inflation proof capital budgets, that meant that we had to make difficult decisions to prioritise spend and protect the most vulnerable in our society.
Even so, we continued to invest more than £1.4 billion in support that benefited children in low-income families. That investment enabled us to continue delivering critical support, including awarding more than £455 million to families through the Scottish child payment, providing support for more than 6,000 parents through devolved employability services and mitigating the UK Government’s benefit cap to support almost 10,000 children.
We have also taken steps to further strengthen the support that is available. That includes the expansion of our ambitious fairer future partnerships into five more local authority areas, the expansion of our successful council tax debt pilot project into six new local authority areas and the delivery of a second round of our child poverty practice accelerator fund, which supports a range of innovative local action.
We responded to the emerging needs of families by delivering £2.9 million of funding to cancel historical school meal debt and a £41 million package of measures to support households struggling with energy costs over the winter. As is set out in the report, 68 of the 113 actions reported on this year were either completed or delivering at scale, which is an increase from 60 as of March 2024.
The action that we have taken stands in stark contrast to that of the current and previous UK Governments. Although I welcome the establishment of the UK Government’s child poverty task force, and early actions, including the fair repayment rate in universal credit and the Employment Rights Bill, the reality is that the action that has been taken so far has lacked the necessary urgency and fails to meet the scale of the challenge.
It is deeply disappointing that the two-child benefit cap remains UK Government policy. That policy is estimated to have pulled more than 35,000 children into poverty since July last year, and estimates suggest that it will pull a further 20,000 children into poverty by the autumn unless it is scrapped. That inaction is made worse still by the UK Government’s plans to make deep cuts to social security for disabled people. The Department for Work and Pension’s own impact assessments highlight that, by 2029-30, an estimated 3.9 million families will lose out as a result of reforms and that they risk driving an additional 250,000 people across the UK into poverty, including 50,000 children. I urge the UK Government to reverse those damaging cuts and to work with us in eradicating child poverty. The actions of the Scottish Government show that another way is possible, and it is one that gives us hope for the future.
In the final year of the “Best Start, Bright Futures” programme and of this session of Parliament, we will continue to drive forward progress towards the 2030 targets and take steps to improve the lives of and outcomes for families. That includes further investment in childcare; delivering more free breakfast club places; providing additional support in school holidays for children with disability; and expanding our extra time partnership with the Scottish Football Association so that 5,000 children and their families can benefit. In addition, we are allocating £768 million for our affordable housing supply programme, enabling the delivery of more than 8,000 homes, with £40 million being targeted at local authorities facing the most sustained temporary accommodation pressures. It also includes further expanding provision of free school meals, so that around 25,000 children and young people can further benefit.
Because the UK Government is failing to act, we are urgently driving forward action that will, in effect, scrap the impact of the universal credit two-child benefit cap in Scotland. I am pleased to announce today that, subject to the passing of the necessary legislation, Social Security Scotland will accept applications for the two-child limit payment from 2 March 2026, with payments beginning as soon as possible after that date. The Scottish Fiscal Commission estimates that mitigation payments will be made in respect of 43,000 children at a total cost of £155 million in 2025-26, rising to 50,000 children and £194 million by 2029-30.
It is estimated that that mitigation will reduce the number of children living in poverty by 20,000 next year. In addition, it will significantly reduce the depth of poverty experienced by thousands more as a result of payments that could be worth more than £3,500 per child. As the First Minister has said, if the UK Government does the right thing and scraps the cap, we are committed to investing mitigation spend into further ambitious measures to tackle child poverty, enabling us to accelerate progress in the years ahead.
Alongside our continued focus on delivery, we have already begun to engage with partners and Parliament to inform the development of the next tackling child poverty delivery plan. That includes launching our call for evidence in February and working with partners, including Young Scot, the Poverty Alliance and Changing Realities, to meaningfully engage children and young people, and parents themselves, to help to inform the next plan.
The plan will also be informed by new research that we have published today, including the outputs from a review of international approaches to tackling child poverty and research that is focused on gender and child poverty, and by both the final report from our independent expert group on the minimum income guarantee and the advice of the Poverty and Inequality Commission.
Covering 2026-31, the plan will be the final plan ahead of the 2030 targets, and it will be progressed by the Scottish Government that will be formed following the next Holyrood elections. That offers the opportunity to build consensus across the Parliament and Scotland on the actions that need to be taken in the years ahead. I thank the committees for their input to date, and I look forward to engaging with members across the chamber as we continue this important work.
Together with our partners, including local government, we will continue to do everything within the scope of our powers and our budget to continue to drive progress towards the 2030 targets that were unanimously agreed by the Scottish Parliament. I urge the UK Government to match the ambition and investment of the Scottish Government and to work with us to help to end child poverty. I encourage all members, regardless of political beliefs, to work with the Government to develop a plan that will build on the progress that has been made and deliver enduring reductions in child poverty for generations to come.
The cabinet secretary will now take questions on the issues that were raised in her statement. I intend to allow about 20 minutes for questions, after which we will move to the next item of business. I would be grateful if members who wish to put a question would press their request-to-speak buttons now.
I thank the cabinet secretary for prior sight of her statement. I put on the record, again, that the Scottish Conservatives, like all other parties in the chamber, absolutely see child poverty as an important issue.
I will concentrate my questions on the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s most recent report. First, the SFC says that the Scottish Government’s mitigation of the two-child cap would be one of two major factors contributing to the widening gap between social security spend in Scotland and available funding. Where will cuts be made to pay for that mitigation?
Secondly, how does the cabinet secretary respond to the claims from some independent economic analysts that the mitigation will create perverse incentives against working, at a time when Scotland is already facing significantly higher percentages of economic inactivity than elsewhere? Does she think that that might be the reason why a lot of members of the public support the two-child cap?
Finally, the Scottish Fiscal Commission has calculated that the mitigation will cost £156 million in 2026-27 and that that will rise to £199 million—which is a slightly different figure from the one that the cabinet secretary just gave—over the period to 2029-30. Can the cabinet secretary explain why a 27.5 per cent increase is expected in that short period of time?
On the last point, a number of children will be brought into the two-child cap because of the way that it brings in more families as the children age. That is why there is a difference in the numbers.
I take Liz Smith’s point about dealing with economic inactivity. That is why the Deputy First Minister and other ministers have been resolute in our determination to assist people who are economically inactive to move into employment with the help of employability schemes or childcare schemes. However, it is important that we do that by supporting people out of economic inactivity, instead of punishing them for having children, which is exactly what the two-child cap does.
Liz Smith is also right to say that some of the challenges around the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s forecasts of the cost of social security result from Scottish Government decisions that have been taken to keep children out of poverty despite the two-child cap, and from the UK Government’s determination to push children into poverty by reducing the spend on disabled people. We have made those choices to protect disabled people and children because we need to protect them from the effects of poverty. Those decisions will be set out in the work that the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government has taken forward on the sustainability of our finances. We recognise that challenge
Finally, the easiest way to deal with those challenges is for the UK Government to follow the principles that it claims to have and scrap the two-child cap and its proposals to cut disabled benefits. That would take away the challenges that Liz Smith points to.
I thank the cabinet secretary for the advance sight of her statement, both at the usual time and in her morning press exclusives.
There has been a lot of spin and, in the statement, there is a myriad of excuses, but the reality is that there is also failure. For all the rhetoric that we have had from the First Minister and the cabinet secretary, after the Scottish National Party’s 18 years in office, relative child poverty, after housing costs, has fallen by only 1 per cent. When the cabinet secretary says that rates are “broadly ... stable”, what she really means is that the dial has not shifted.
On the two-child limit, over the history of that policy, Scottish Labour has been consistently clear that we want it to be scrapped, but the haphazard and last-minute decision to include its mitigation in the budget makes a mockery of the claim that the cabinet secretary made over many years that she was powerless to do anything about it. I note the letter that has been issued before we meet her this afternoon, which outlines that applications will be open but does not say when payments will be made. It also talks about using Scottish child payment data—the cabinet secretary was not willing to admit to that in the past.
On the wider picture facing Scotland’s young people and the root causes of child poverty, responsibility for failing to meet the targets lies with the Scottish Government. It is the SNP that failed to deliver on its commitments to expand free school meals; it is the SNP that stripped employability services to the bone; and it is the SNP that created a housing emergency, with 10,000 children in temporary accommodation. Is it not the truth that more of the same will not deliver the 2030 targets and that the SNP Government is out of ideas and out of time to meaningfully reduce child poverty?
What Labour has delivered since it came into power is a review of universal credit and a delayed child poverty task force report. The reason why the Scottish Government stepped forward at the budget is that some people—I can appreciate where they came from on this—actually thought that a change of United Kingdom Government, from Conservative to Labour, would make a difference, but it did not. That is why the Scottish Government will deliver the effective scrapping of the two-child cap when Labour has failed to do so. We are determined to move forward on that, and to do so more quickly than we had originally thought that we could.
The payments will come after people apply, depending on when their universal credit is paid. That is because we have a devolved system that relies on parts of the system that are reserved and that relate to universal credit. The simple way for us to deal with the issue is to have all the powers here and not to rely in any way on a Labour Government’s promises or the false hopes that it raised before an election and on which it continues to fail to deliver afterwards.
I call Emma Harper.
Thank you, Presiding Officer. I am having an iPad issue—thank you for bearing with me.
It has previously been reported that the rate of child poverty among rural Dumfries and Galloway communities has hit a record high and that Dumfries and Galloway had a child poverty rate of 26.9 per cent in 2022-23. Given the clear link between Labour’s policy of the two-child cap and child poverty, will the cabinet secretary update us again on the Scottish Government’s plans to end the impact of the two-child cap in Scotland?
As I have confirmed, the payment will open for applications on 2 March. That is earlier than we had planned, which shows our determination to move as quickly as possible on the issue. Emma Harper is right to point to the challenge of poverty in rural areas and in other communities across Scotland. The level of poverty, particularly among larger families, is absolutely related to the impact of the two-child cap. That is why campaigners have been campaigning for change, why they are disappointed that the UK Government has refused to come forward with that policy and why we will deliver it on 2 March.
Access to affordable good-quality childcare is essential to supporting parents back into work. That was highlighted in a Social Justice and Social Security Committee report last year, and it is a recognised route out of poverty. The progress report highlights the recruitment of 40 new childminders as a result of the programme for Scotland’s childminding future, which is, of course, welcome. However, that equates to roughly one and a quarter new childminders per local authority.
Given that the Scottish Government’s expansion of early years childcare from 21 August was predicated on working with the private sector and childminders, and that Scotland lost 255 childminders in 2022-23 alone, with the total almost halving since the SNP came into power, does the cabinet secretary think that the recruitment drive goes anywhere near far enough to address the shortage, which is entirely of the Government’s making? When will the barriers to parental employment be properly addressed?
In my statement, I detailed some of the work that has been undertaken and will be undertaken next year to assist with the delivery of early learning and childcare and out-of-hours support for working families.
Our expansion of early learning and childcare has been exceptionally important. Scotland is the only part of the UK to already offer 1,140 hours a year of funded ELC to three and four-year-olds and eligible two-year-olds. Childminders are an important part of the flexibility that will be taken forward. The encouragement of more childminders into early learning and childcare and the work that is being undertaken to support that is exceptionally important, as is the work that is being taken forward in our 23 early adopter communities.
Regarding school-age childcare programme work, I have mentioned the extra time programme and the bright start breakfasts programme, which are examples of policies that not only help early learning and childcare but offer different approaches that might be suitable for families. Work has also been undertaken in school-age childcare in order to support the flexibility that people need when they are looking to get into the workplace or expand their hours.
I thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of her statement. What engagement has the cabinet secretary had with the Secretary of State for Scotland about the development of a UK-wide child poverty strategy?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland joined the most recent ministerial task force meeting on 14 May. The work that the UK Government has undertaken through the child poverty task force on a four-nation basis has been exceptionally disappointing. It has not allowed for the level of in-depth discussions that the Scottish Government wished to see and expected, given the discussions between the First Minister and Prime Minister about a resetting of relationships when the new UK Government came in.
Clearly, we are very concerned about the delay to the child poverty task force report, because that seems to suggest that the action that comes from the report will also be delayed. We have asked for clarity from the task force co-chairs in order to get at least some idea of what might be in the report, so that we know its impact on children and what we can do with the UK Government to support even more children.
Data that has come out today shows that the number of young people in the most deprived communities who go on to a positive destination has fallen to the lowest point since 2019 and that the gap has widened. The impact of the SNP’s failure to meet the interim child poverty targets is leaving Scotland’s most disadvantaged pupils behind.
What is fundamentally wrong with the Government’s approach is that it refuses to change direction or address the root causes of poverty. Education and skills are key to that, but there was precious little on those aspects in the Government’s statement. The Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill has been roundly rejected by stakeholders, and colleges, which are key to lifting people out of poverty, barely get a mention—there was nothing in the statement to address budget concerns, course closures or college staff losing their jobs. What will it take for the Government to realise that education and colleges are key to lifting people out of poverty?
Education is critical to our approach, which is exactly why we are investing up to £1 billion in the Scottish attainment challenge in this parliamentary session, including in pupil equity funding, in order to empower our headteachers to take approaches that best suit their pupils’ needs. That is an exceptionally important piece of the work that we are undertaking. The poverty-related attainment gap between young people from the most deprived areas and those from the least deprived areas who are meeting standards in literacy in primary school is at a record low, so we are seeing progress.
It is very important that we look to our colleges and universities to encourage young people on whatever path they choose. Once again, we have heard a long list of suggestions from Labour on how to spend money, but it has shown absolutely no responsibility by failing to bring forward plans on how any of those suggestions would be paid for. I am not surprised, but I continue to be disappointed by that.
I note that Professor Danny Dorling has published a piece that praises the Scottish Government’s work on tackling child poverty, in which he says:
“Scotland has shown what can be done and needs to be done.”
With Scotland setting an example on what can be achieved, he predicts that Westminster will be forced to act. I am keen to understand whether the UK Government has acknowledged the success of the Scottish child payment and whether there have been any discussions about creating a UK-wide benefit.
I am continually disappointed by the UK Government’s lack of progress on that issue. There has been a lot of back and forth between Labour members—I hope that they are conferring among themselves on how they can perhaps persuade their Labour colleagues down south, because I spot a bit of uncomfortableness on the part of the Scottish Labour Party today. We are bringing forward plans to mitigate policies from a UK Labour Government. I never thought that that would be needed.
Whether it relates to the UK Government’s lack of action on the two-child cap or to our learning from the Scottish child payment, we stand ready to assist the UK Government should it wish to introduce policies that, as Professor Dorling has said, have made a major difference in tackling poverty in Scotland.
Earlier this month, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation provided a toolkit that describes the wide-ranging transformations that are needed if we are to meet the 2031 child poverty reduction targets. It makes clear the distinctions between poverty, deep poverty and very deep poverty. One in three children in poverty are in deep poverty and are more than £1,000 a month away from getting out of poverty. The Scottish child payment and employment support will not close that gap. If we do not deal with very deep poverty, we will not reach our targets. What holistic and targeted interventions are planned that will focus on families in deep and very deep poverty?
Maggie Chapman is quite right to point to the specific challenge of deep poverty. In the JRF’s “UK Poverty 2024” report, it is clear that six successive UK Prime Ministers have overseen deepening poverty over the past 20 years. It describes that as “social failure at scale”.
That is exactly why the Government looks not only at how many children we can keep out of poverty and how many children we can assist in many different ways, but at how we can help children to get out of deep poverty. It is positive that the level of deep poverty among children fell by four percentage points in 2023-24. That means that 40,000 fewer children were in deep poverty because of the work that the Scottish Government has undertaken. However, I recognise that the Scottish and UK Governments have more to do on the issue.
I am afraid that the cabinet secretary’s statement is wholly depressing. The Government seems to be more interested in attacking the Labour Party than in solving child poverty in this country. We should have a direct focus on that.
Although I support the Scottish child payment—providing direct cash payments is a good thing—we know that it is not sustainable in the long term for struggling families or for the public finances. We should be putting more investment into projects such as the Wise Group’s relational mentoring programme. I know that the Government is supporting that project, but I wish that there was more excitement about lifting families out of poverty in a sustainable way for the long term, instead of all the politicking that is going on this afternoon.
I appreciate Willie Rennie’s frustration. I am frustrated, too, but perhaps for a different reason. I can see what a difference it would make if we had two Governments, rather than just one, trying to lift people out of poverty, so I make no apologies for pointing out the reality that we are in.
However, Willie Rennie is quite right to point out that it is not simply a question of making direct payments to people, such as the Scottish child payment; we need to undertake other work. I will give some examples of the work that is contained in the report that I mentioned.
Our fairer futures partnerships are being expanded into more local authority areas, and we are doing work on our whole-family holistic approach. We are doing that because, as I see when I go on visits and as the evidence shows, we make the biggest difference when we assist young people and their families to address the various challenges that have an impact on them. I am talking about a systemic change rather than a change that simply involves giving money out to assist people to deal with the immediate poverty that they are in.
When it comes to our approach, I do not think that it is a case of either/or, although I am afraid that it is when it comes to how to spend money, because we can spend money either on the Scottish child payment or on other issues, but we cannot spend it twice.
I recognise the challenge that the member rightly puts to the Government in relation to the Scottish child payment and the wider support that we need to give to people. I hope that, when he reads through the publication in detail, he will see the work that we are doing through, for example, the fairer futures partnerships and our determination to progress those.
Unlike some members, I see the positives of much of what the cabinet secretary has said today. I can see from the cabinet secretary’s statement that the eradication of child poverty is clearly at the heart of the Scottish Government’s plans and ambitions. How will measures and investments arising from the 2025-26 budget drive forward those plans?
A number of areas in the 2025-26 budget will assist the Government with the eradication of child poverty. Those important measures include the provision of 8,000 affordable homes, the expansion of free school meals to a further 25,000 children and low-income families, and our continued delivery of unique support through the Scottish child payment.
On a recent visit to Renfrew, I saw the important work that has been undertaken by the extra time partnership to encourage young people to stay on at school and take part in extra time partnership activities. I spoke to the parents who were there that night about the difference that that had made by allowing them to take on extra shifts or get back into employment. That is a positive programme, and the budget for this year will allow us to expand it.
We are hearing the same thing time and time again. It is always someone else’s fault when it comes to the SNP failing to achieve its targets.
Over the years, the Scottish Government has promised to deliver a number of policies to eradicate child poverty, such as free laptops, free bikes, smaller classroom sizes, new swing parks and closing the attainment gap, to name just a few. However, not one of those policies has been delivered in full.
I want to go back to the important question that was raised by my colleague Liz Smith about the mitigation of the two-child cap. The issue comes down to finances. As Liz Smith rightly pointed out, the mitigation of that policy will contribute significantly to worsening the pressure on the social security budget. I will simply repeat the question, because I do not believe that the cabinet secretary answered it when Liz Smith asked it originally. How will that be funded?
This is about setting out responsibilities. Today, I have set out the responsibilities that the Scottish Government feels very deeply, and I have set out the responsibilities that I expect the UK Government to have on child poverty. Again, I make no apology for that, because it is a simple statement of fact: if we want children to be lifted out of poverty, it would help if both Governments were pointing in the same direction.
I am also concerned when we discuss the level of expenditure on social security, which the Scottish Conservatives’ leader and others continuously say that they want to be cut. We have made decisions to scrap the two-child cap, in effect, and to invest in the Scottish child payment, because we want to lift children out of poverty.
The Scottish Conservatives need to be very clear to people. If they want to cut social security expenditure, do they plan to take it from disabled people, as the Labour Party does? Do they intend to take it from carers or from low-income families?
We will balance our budget in every year, as we always do. The Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government will set out the sustainability of our finances, but the Tories also need to come clean about whose benefits they would cut—would they cut the benefits of disabled people, of low-income people or of carers?
I thank the cabinet secretary for outlining her vision and priority of lifting children out of poverty. How are UK Government policies actively contributing to the problem? What is the Government’s assessment of the delays to the work of the UK Government’s child poverty task force?
My assessment of the delay in the production of the task force’s report is that I fear that the UK Government knows that its current policies are making the situation worse rather than better. One thing that I hear is supposed to be happening tomorrow is the UK Government’s announcement of its determination to cut benefits for disabled people, which, as I mentioned earlier, will push 50,000 children into poverty. That one policy, which is apparently being announced this week, will push 50,000 children into poverty. That policy is being announced in the same week that I have made a statement on how we are lifting children out of poverty.
That concludes the ministerial statement. There will be a brief pause before we move on to the next item of business.
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