New research reveals achievable outcomes

Analysis published shows that increasing the Scottish Child Payment to £30 a week would be enough to ensure Scotland’s poverty targets are met.

Research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation says that without further support the target will be missed by four percentage points, locking 40,000 more children in poverty than the statutory targets require.

The Child Poverty (Scotland) Act, passed unanimously by the Scottish Parliament in 2017, sets statutory targets to reduce child poverty rates to less than 18% by 2024 and less than 10% by 2030.

John Dickie, director of the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) in Scotland, said the analysis shows why the call to all parties to commit to doubling the Scottish child payment is "utterly essential, and also absolutely achievable."

He added: "Increasing the Scottish child payment would lay the foundation on which the wider action needed to end child poverty, like increasing parent’s earnings and reducing housing costs, can be built. The next Scottish Parliament needs to use very lever at its disposal to end the poverty that undermines the life chances of so many of our children.

"At least doubling the Scottish child payment is the essential first step to ensuring all our children are protected from the indignity of foodbanks, the stress of parents making impossible choices between eating or paying the bills and the misery of missing out at school”.

Dickie continued: “It’s also clear from this analysis how important the UK government £20 uplift to universal credit is. If it is not retained thousands more children are pushed into poverty.

"We need government at every level to work together so that every child grows up in a family with an income adequate to the task of giving children a decent start in life.”