Poor families need more than cups of tea and thin air, says Richard Leonard
Labour leader Richard Leonard and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.
By Lizzie Healey
Almost 250,000 Scottish children are now living in poverty, Labour Party leader Richard Leonard told the Holyrood parliament on Thursday.
He told First Minister Nicola Sturgeon: “This morning’s figures show that 10,000 more children in Scotland are living in poverty.
“That means that almost a quarter of a million children in Scotland are living in poverty today.”
Mr Leonard said it was little wonder that Dr Mary Anne MacLeod from the anti-poverty project, A Menu for Change, says that the Scottish Government must:
- Give people living on cups of tea and thin air more to sustain them. And they must do it now.
And the Child Poverty Action Group said that:
- The Scottish Government’s timetable for a new income supplement fails to reflect the extraordinary increase in child poverty that the country faces. Children in poverty really can’t wait until 2022.
Mr Leonard asked: “Why is the First Minister making those children wait?”
Ms Sturgeon said: “We are doing the work to ensure that we have a policy that can be delivered and paid for, and which lifts the maximum number of children out of poverty. This week, Labour’s most recent policy announcement—on bus travel—was exposed as completely unworked through. It is not fair to promise people things that cannot be delivered. We will not do that. We will make plans that can be delivered.”
She added: “On action that we are taking to tackle child poverty, we are investing £125 million a year to mitigate the worst impacts of Tory policy. We heard what the UN rapporteur on poverty said: ‘Devolved administrations have tried to mitigate the worst impacts of austerity, despite experiencing significant reductions in block grant funding and … limits on their ability to raise revenue. … But mitigation comes at a price and is not sustainable’.
“We will continue to take real action. We will continue to demand that the powers that the Tories are using to impose those policies on Scotland are brought to the Scottish Parliament. The sooner that Richard Leonard supports us in that, the better.”
Richard Leonard said: “The Prime Minister’s answer to Commons gridlock and Brexit meltdown is to offer to resign—again. While MPs cannot make a decision, too many people in the real world have no choice, day in and day out, but to make heart-breaking decisions as a result of a decade of Tory austerity—decisions such as paying the bills or feeding their children.
“The result is that more than half a million food parcels were handed out in Scotland over the past 18 months.”
He asked: “Does the First Minister agree that Brexit is not the only reason why Theresa May must go?”
The First Minister replied: “Yes, I do. I look back a few years, to 2014, and I reflect on the fact that, if Labour had not teamed up with the Tories to stop Scotland becoming independent, we would not have had a Tory Prime Minister for the past few years.”
She added: “Child poverty, and poverty generally, in Scotland is too high, although it is important to note that it is lower in Scotland than it is in England or Labour-run Wales.
“Nevertheless, it is because child poverty is too high that we are taking steps to mitigate the impact of Tory welfare cuts and to invest in reducing child poverty and, of course, we are committed to the introduction of an income supplement, which will lift more children out of poverty, by making sure that we target that resource to those who most need it. When we publish the way forward on that by June this year, I hope that we will get Scottish Labour’s support for it.”