I’ve seen far too much of Breadline Scotland in 2017.. but it’ll plummet to whole new level in the year 2022
A nurse coming off a shift queuing up at a foodbank, begging and borrowing to make ends meet. Another foodbank - in Glasgow – overwhelmed and running out of supplies. A family centre in my own hometown facing an eight-fold increase in demand for help sinc
POVERTY is growing in Britain, as is foodbank use by people who shouldn’t need them. The former PM writes exclusively in the Daily Record about his fear that it will get worse if the Conservatives win next month’s General Election.
“IN less than five years, according to forecasts, 320,000 children in this country – that is, one in every three – will officially be in poverty.
What a desperate, dismal projection that should leave everyone searching their souls.
Isn’t this what should really matter on June 8? More than Conservative grandstanding on Europe and SNP preaching independence at all costs.
Let us tell the men and women who count, the ones we vote for and the ones who can change it.
But tell them loud and clear because innocent girls and boys are suffering in every city, town and corner of Scotland and no matter what they say, nobody in power at the moment, and with the resources to change it seems to give a stuff.
The latest statistics in the report by the Institute of Fiscal Studies make grim reading, not just in Scotland but the length and breadth of the United Kingdom. Alarming figure after figure shows: ●UK poverty will have risen from 14million at its peak in the 1990s, under the Tories, to 15.7million in 2022.
Child poverty will have risen from 4.3million in the 1990s to 5.1million in 2022.
Overall poverty will be up by two million and child poverty by one million. This is the biggest rise in poverty and child poverty since the bleak Margaret Thatcher/John Major years.
Imagine, by 2022 there will be more poor in Theresa May’s Britain than Thatcher’s Britain.
It begs the question – what kind of country are May’s Tories creating if child poverty is on course to reach such shameful record levels?
In Scotland, we have also seen a dramatic rise of the working poor. Seventy per cent of children affected by poverty have at least one parent in work. This means that out of the 260,000 currently in poverty, 180,000 of them are in families where at least one parent is employed.
The Tories want to fight the election in England on being anti-European and in Scotland on being anti-independence. The SNP belt out the same old song for an independent Scotland.
The real issue we should be fighting on is social justice. Who will fight for those children – youngsters whose fathers or mothers work all week and still can’t keep their kids out of poverty?
Mark my words, Scotland in 2022 will be a deeply divided country – and the SNP and Tory governments have no plans to do anything other than let things fester.
I’ve seen this wave of rising poverty at first hand – weary primary school children arriving in their classroom without breakfast and homes without even a cooker for a hot meal. It’s real.
The recent foodbank crisis in Glasgow is no one-off. Throughout
the country, these lifesaving centres are under huge pressure.
The family centres I visit regularly have seen the numbers needing help rocket. In my hometown of Kirkcaldy there is one where just under 100 food parcels were handed out at Christmas in 2011. Last December, I watched a squad of volunteers preparing 800 parcels.
So May can talk of a secure and stable UK but poor families have neither security nor stability. She claims to speak for those who are just about managing… but there are millions who are not.
The SNP can say they’re strong for Scotland – but it’s a divided Scotland they’re creating with millions taken from the poorest estates to fund SNP priorities..
How did we get to this point so rapidly? A Labour government brought in tax credits and raised child benefit to cut poverty.
The Tories have slashed the value of child benefit. In 10 years, to 2020, it will rise just two per cent while prices have risen 35 per cent.
They’ve cut the working tax credit for low-paid families – it has risen by four per cent while prices have risen eight times as fast.
They’ve cut the value of housing benefit, which no longer covers your rent.
And the value of the minimum wage for poor families is being eroded daily by cuts in tax credits.
It is the Labour Party who make it a priority to spend more on children’s benefits. Kezia Dugdale has said the Scottish Parliament should top them up if the UK Government refuse to do so.
This is the reality of Scotland in 2017, of rising poverty and unfairness which demands that this election becomes the social justice election, not the election of petulance, posturing and points scoring.”
NICOLA Sturgeon says the growth of food banks in Scotland has been caused by Conservative austerity policies.
And the SNP leader warned a greater Tory majority at Westminster following next month’s general election would lead to “an even greater burden of needless austerity”.
On a visit to the Highland Foodbank in Inverness, Sturgeon said: “The growth of food banks is a damning indictment of how damaging Tory austerity has been to communities across Scotland.
“The SNP have worked to protect household incomes by keeping council tax bills low and by supporting families at every stage of their life – from the baby box and support for new parents, to free university education, to free medicine and free personal care.
“In contrast, the Tories have argued for years that the sick should pay for their medicine, that the young should be forced into debt to pay for tuition and that the elderly should face costs for personal care.
“The Tories at Westminster would use a bigger majority at this election to make ordinary families bear an even greater burden of needless austerity.”
She added: “Tory policies – particularly their social security policies – are plunging more and more people into poverty.
“Inverness is one of the areas where universal credit has been implemented early and the impact of that has been devastating for a lot of people.”