Government on mission to end our childhood poverty scourge
Scottish Government figures produced last week showed that a quarter of children in Scotland are living in poverty.
This was an increase of four per cent on the previous year’s figures. If urgent action isn’t taken to reduce these numbers, it is forecast the level of child poverty in Scotland will rise by another 50 per cent in Scotland by 2020.
In my parliamentary constituency of Airdrie and Shotts over 28 per cent of children are living in poverty and in some of our communities the figure is even higher. In the neighbouring constituency of Motherwell and Wishaw the figure is over 26 per cent.
Seventy per cent of the children in poverty live in households where someone is in work, indicating that low wages are one of the main causes of child poverty, as is unemployment.
Tackling child poverty must become a top priority for all.
A child who is poor is much less likely to do well at school. He/she is more likely to experience poor health throughout their lives, their chances of getting a decent job when they grow up are reduced because of poverty and their life expectancy is also often affected by living in poverty as a child.
Clearly, this is a totally unacceptable situation.
The Scottish Government are investing heavily in children’s early years and in improving services, for example by recruiting another 500 health visitors to help poor families cope and extending the Family Nurse Partnerships to help teenage mums.
The new Child Poverty Bill will set targets for reducing child poverty in Scotland significantly by 2030.
My own view is that, as money becomes available, we need to give priority to putting more money into the hands of poor families.
No matter how many excellent government programmes there are to help poor people, if they don’t have enough money in their pockets to be able to enjoy a better quality of life they will forever be condemned to living in poverty.
The best way to put money into people’s pockets is by providing well-paid jobs, increasing the child tax credit for poorer families, and incentivising all employers to pay the living wage.
It can’t be done overnight but we owe it to every poor child alive today and those yet to be born to make it our mission to end child poverty in Scotland.