Scottish government urged to use devolved powers on child poverty

The Scottish government is coming under pressure to commit to using its newly devolved powers to top up benefits in order to meet its child poverty targets.

Last November, Holyrood passed Scotland’s first child poverty bill, which reintroduced the statutory targets abolished by the UK government a year earlier. The four goals, which include reducing relative poverty from 26% to 10% of children and absolute poverty from 21% to 5% of children, must be met by 2030.

But anti-poverty campaigners, supported by research from the cross-party thinktank IPPR Scotland, argue that using the new powers to top up existing benefits, part of an extensive package of welfare devolution going through the Scottish parliament, is the simplest and most effective way of meeting those targets.

According to the IPPR Scotland report, which modelled the effects of topping-up the child element of universal credit for the next financial year, a top-up of £50 a month could bring 45,000 children out of relative poverty, at a cost of £390m a year, reducing child poverty in Scotland by just under a fifth

The number of children could increase to 100,000 with a top-up of £150 a month, at a cost of £950m a year, reducing relative child poverty rates in Scotland from 26% to 19%. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has forecast that relative child poverty rates in Scotland could reach 29% by 2021-22 because of slowing economic growth and continued austerity.

Source: theguardian