Scottish Labour urges the SNP to work with them to stop growing child poverty

There must be an increase in child benefit to stop the sky rocketing levels of child poverty, Kezia Dugdale has urged.

A staggering 70,000 more Scottish children are living in poverty now than five years ago, as the Scottish Labour proposal to use the powers of Holyrood to raise child benefit gains further traction amongst the public.

“The SNP government should use the powers over social security to top up child benefit by £240 by 2020. That’s a move that would help over half a million families across Scotland, and lift 30,000 children out of poverty,” Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale said.

The Child Poverty Action group estimates that the proposed move would lift 30,000 children out of poverty north of the border.

Scottish Labour are using this week of campaigning to show what a radical Labour government in Holyrood could do to end the austerity agenda of the SNP and Westminster Tories.

Last week, British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn focussed his summer campaign in Scotland’s new marginals, where he said that Scotland held the key to him entering Downing Street. 

“Scotland should be the best place in the world to live, work, grow up and grow old in – and that starts with a fairer country,” Dugdale said.

In the year 2011-12, 190,000 children were judged to be living in poverty after housing costs in Scotland, but in the last year figures were available, that had leapt to 260,000.

“Over a quarter of a million children in Scotland living in poverty is a national scandal that should shame each and every one of us and should shock the SNP government into action,” she added.

“These are the kind of positive, anti-austerity policies Scottish Labour will continue to push for in Holyrood. SNP MSPs should work with Labour and deliver a Scotland that works for the many.”