Sarwar plans to tackle ‘stain on our society’
LABOUR leadership candidate Anas Sarwar has revealed plans to create a Scottish child tax credit giving a weekly funding boost to the poorest families.
The means-tested payment would go to those already receiving UK child tax credits, using Holyrood’s new powers over welfare to top up by £10 per week per child.
Mr Sarwar said the policy is estimated to cost £263 million a year and would apply to about 280,000 families and lift 50,000 children out of poverty, reducing child poverty by 19 per cent.
The proposal would be funded by changes to income tax and replaces Scottish Labour’s current £225 million plans to add £5 a week to child benefit to help 30,000 children out of poverty, cutting the child poverty rate by 14 per cent. An estimated one in four children in Scotland – 260,000 – are living in poverty.
Speaking at Glasgow South West Foodbank in Govan, Mr Sarwar said: “Child poverty is a stain on our society, with too many youngsters growing up in households that struggle to afford food, heating or clothing.
“This fully-costed policy will deliver transformational change by lifting 50,000 children out of poverty in Scotland.
“The new Scottish child tax credit will reduce child poverty by nearly a fifth and will be very deliberately targeted at the poorest households in our country.”
He added: “Unlike the SNP, I am prepared to use Holyrood’s new powers to build a better future for the next generation of Scots but that can only happen if Labour stops talking to itself and starts talking to the country, so that we can win elections once again.”
A campaign spokesman for Mr Sarwar’s leadership rival Richard Leonard MSP said: “In the last week Richard has set out a raft a policies, with more to come, to tackle poverty and in particular child poverty
“It’s clear that only Scottish Labour is serious about developing and delivering the policies that tackle the scourge of child poverty.”
An SNP spokesman said: “When Anas Sarwar was last in the Labour leadership team, his party opposed giving Scotland the full powers needed to effectively tackle child poverty – leaving vital powers in the hands of a cruel Tory government. Given his party’s track record, people across Scotland will once again doubt his sincerity.”