End Child Poverty campaigners set out key priorities.

Children’s charities, equalities groups and anti-poverty campaigners have set out clear calls for Scottish Government ahead of the 2025-2026 Scottish budget.

The End Child Poverty Coalition (ECP) in Scotland has set out five key asks for ministers ahead of next week’s budget, including delivering an above inflation increase to the Scottish Child Payment.

The ECP also urged the SNP government to use tax powers and Barnett consequentials to meet child poverty targets, as well as providing holistic whole-family support. 

In the period 2020 to 2023, one in four children in Scotland were growing up in poverty. As well as harming children and families, poverty harms Scotland’s economy to the cost of at least £2.4billion per year.

With the 2025-26 Scottish Budget looming and both Scottish Government and the First Minister stating tackling child poverty is their ‘first priority’, the group is calling for government to allocate the necessary additional resources to address the root causes of child poverty ranging from social security, employment, housing and whole-family support.

To enable this, the coalition believes that focused action must also be made to support those groups at highest risk of being in poverty. These include the six priority families: lone parents, young mothers (under 25 years old), minority ethnic families, large families (with three or more children), families with a baby under one and families with a disabled adult or child.

Members of the End Child Poverty coalition in Scotland include the Child Poverty Action Group, Aberlour, One Parent Families Scotland, Barnardo’s, Children 1st, engender, Close the Gap, Save the Children, the Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights and the Poverty Alliance.

The body set-up to advise and scrutinise progress in reducing child poverty in Scotland, the Poverty and Inequality Commission, says that aside from social security, only “limited progress has been made” in tackling child poverty with slow progress in some areas and a “failure to invest sufficient additional funding”.

Speaking on behalf of members of End Child Poverty in Scotland, John Dickie said: “The clock to 2030 is ticking. We welcome progress on action to drive down child poverty, especially through investment in the Scottish Child Payment, a powerful intervention for putting money directly in the pockets of low-income families but further action needs to be taken if we are to shift the dial on child poverty enough to meet the statutory targets by 2030.

“There is nothing inevitable about child poverty. It is vital that the Scottish Government raises the resources in this budget - including through the ambitious and bold use of devolved taxation and Barnett consequentials flowing from the recent UK Budget – to fund the action needed to deliver on the First Minister’s number one priority of ending child poverty.”