‘No funds to pay extra child cash’

The first minister has said she would “love” to double a key benefit to tackle poverty, but the Scottish Government does not have the funding to do so.

Nicola Sturgeon was addressing the annual conference of the Poverty Alliance in Glasgow.

The Scottish Government has cut £1.2 billion from its budget for this year in the face of inflationary pressures, with warnings that increases to public sector pay will require cuts from elsewhere in the budget.

Ms Sturgeon faced questions about the Scottish Child Payment and whether the weekly £25 – it was increased this month – is enough in the cost-of-living crisis.

“I would love to take it further,” she said. “I would love to double it from that.

“This is where I have to be really honest with you – the Scottish Government within that fixed, eroding budget that I spoke about, we just don’t have the means to do that.”

Ms Sturgeon also told the audience the Scottish

Government is a “victim of our own success”, saying: “We try to do things, we try to say yes to things, and therefore I think sometimes we contribute to a view that we are able to do everything.”

She admitted that the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act – which set in law the government’s target of bringing absolute child poverty below 5% and relative

child poverty below 10% by 2030 – was a “staging post”.

Ms Sturgeon said: “My commitment is to eradicate child poverty, the government’s commitment is to eradicate child poverty, but you’ve got to reduce it in order to do that.

“The targets in the Child Poverty Act, they don’t go as far as we need to go – but they are not going to be easy to meet.”

BUDGET: Nicola Sturgeon faced questions about poverty.