‘Ending child poverty remains complex issue for John Swinney’

Exacerbated by a financial crisis, tightly squeezed welfare budgets, a pandemic and surge in the cost of living, the figures for the whole population also look grim – a million Scots in poverty, measured by income below 60% of median income (the amount earned by the person in the middle of the earnings table).

Those in deep poverty, below the 40% mark, have become a more entrenched feature. Having fallen below that poverty line, there is no safety net or floor of guaranteed income beneath it.

It probably has not helped that there has been turmoil and churn in St Andrew’s House, with first ministers coming and going. Yet each of them has kept as a high priority the vision of Scotland without child poverty.

Implicit in John Swinney’s speech is the lesson that this is not a matter of which powers Holyrood has, or of a simple allocation of money in each year’s budget.

It’s proven to be tougher than that, and Mr Swinney was reflecting that the role of government, as well as a source of finance, is to lead and to convene, to enable, help and motivate others to do the non-financial bits of alleviating poverty.

Ministers can point to big policy interventions – a big lift in childcare, partly to help parents earn, and introduction of the Scottish Child Payment to households with low income, at £26.70 per child per week, helping 330,000 young people.

That is acknowledged by anti-poverty campaigners as a game-changer and they say it’s one that other parts of the UK should follow. It’s expensive, at £470m per year, squeezing other budgets at Holyrood, yet those campaigners don’t think it goes far enough.