4 days Ago By [email protected] (Paul Hutcheon)
A leading campaigner has demanded the child poverty crisis is given the same emergency response as covid. Aberlour chief executive SallyAnn Kelly said the billions spent during the pandemic should also be shelled out for low income families. Figures show that around 240,000 children in Scotland - around 24% - were in relative poverty in 2023.
The number has barely changed since the SNP swept to power in 2007, despite policies like the Scottish Child Payment. The welfare policies of the last Tory Government have been widely blamed for the stubbornly high figures. Kelly, speaking to the Record, said the way the UK and Scottish governments responded to covid should be replicated in the fight against poverty .
She said: “No one could ever underestimate the suffering and loss inflicted by Covid but the lives and life chances of thousands of children are being as badly impacted by poverty as the pandemic. We need the same ambition, determination and urgency around poverty as we had during lockdown in terms of supporting families and protecting the lives of children. The swift and effective action taken then is needed now and our governments need to step up.
” Kelly said the difference in response is because politicians were directly affected by covid but not by poverty . She said: “The emergency support for families during Covid would have been thought impossible just a few weeks earlier. The reason that assistance was put in place with such speed was because politicians and policy-makers were just as affected as everyone else.
“There was no sense that Covid was something happening to other people and that is why the response to poverty is so different. The experience of living in poverty is so far from decision-makers’ lives that they can struggle to understand it. They seem to believe poverty is something that happens to other people, to poor people.
” She also said the “distance” between politicians and poverty had “sabotaged” effective action: “It’s about what commentators call proximity and, right now, our decision makers seem far, far away from families in poverty. The issue does not impact on their day to day lives so they do not seem as invested in addressing it. That was not the case during Covid .
“Policy-makers do not seem to understand the daily challenges facing families , of getting food on the table, getting kids to school, paying for clothes, staying warm and all the rest." Aberlour believes both governments have a key role to play in making big reductions in child poverty . She wants First Minister John Swinney to use his Budget to increase the £26.
70 a week SCP and is urging Keir Starmer to end the two child cap on benefits. The Labour Government has set up an anti-poverty taskforce but continues to resist calls to end the Tory cap. Kelly said: “The same urgent assistance happened during the pandemic, of course, and happened with unprecedented speed.
The difference was the middle classes were trusted so if you were working but furloughed, for example, you would be supported financially because the government trusted you to do the right thing by your family. Families living in poverty deserve that same trust now.” She added: “There is still this notion of the deserving poor and the undeserving poor.
Nobody questioned if people were deserving or undeserving during the pandemic . During Covid, there was an absolute determination to protect everyone and the will to put measures in place urgently. We need that same urgency and determination to help families in poverty right now.
” She spoke approvingly of the SCP and UK Government plans to improve workers’ pay and conditions, but said: “We welcome all of that but it takes time and children do not have that time. They are suffering right now and they need action right now. There must be emergency relief for families, even if only on a temporary basis, until these promised changes take effect.
That kind of temporary, emergency support is exactly what happened during Covid and is exactly what is needed now.” She spoke out as Aberlour launches its poverty relief fundraising campaign. Every pound donated is delivered to families in the most extreme hardship through its Urgent Assistance Fund.
Labour MSP Paul O’Kane said: “Too many children in Scotland across the UK are growing up in poverty, it is an unacceptable scar on our communities, and is the legacy of 17 years of Tory austerity and SNP complacency. Scottish Labour wants to deliver lasting reductions to child poverty using every lever available. "The UK Budget ended the era of austerity, delivering billions more for public services in Scotland.
And our reforms to Universal Credit will see 110,000 Scottish households £420 a year better off. The UK Labour government also established the cross-government Child Poverty Task Force which will look at every lever we can pull to reduce child poverty in our society." Green MSP Maggie Chapman said: “During the height of Covid-19, the government ended homelessness overnight.
It should not take a global pandemic to support the most marginalised groups of people in our society. We need that same determination and action every day.” "Poverty and inequality are not natural or inevitable – they are signs of societal and political failure.
Children are being born into and living in poverty daily. It is a social emergency that demands an emergency response." A UK Government spokesperson said: “No child should be in poverty – that’s why our Ministerial Taskforce is looking at all available levers across government as it develops an ambitious strategy to tackle child poverty.
"Tackling child poverty is a core part of our mission to give everyone opportunity and grow the economy.” Social Justice Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville said: “We will continue to do all we can within our powers and will leave no stone unturned across government as we seek to end child poverty. Modelling published in February estimates that our policies, including the Scottish Child Payment, will keep 100,000 children out of relative poverty this year.
“UK Government investment in social security could bring hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty across the UK. That is why we continue to call for the UK Government to abolish the two-child limit and the benefit cap, and to follow this government’s lead by matching the Scottish Child Payment." Donations to Aberlour's poverty relief fundraising campaign can be made here: www.
aberlour.org.uk/povertyrelief To sign up to the Daily Record Politics newsletter, click here.
