Two-child benefit cap: A tale of two nations and two families

The 43-year-old works for a charity while her husband, Dougie, is a personal support worker for people with disabilities. Two of their three children – 16-year-old David and Rebekah, 12 – have additional needs, so the family’s total income of £25,000 is often stretched.

Next term they will also have to start paying for school meals for their youngest daughter, Mia, who’s 10. The Scottish Child Payment pays the family £213.60 every four weeks for their two daughters; David’s payment stopped when he turned 16.

“Life is stressful when you’ve two kids with additional needs,” says Kirsty. “It means we can do things like go out for a meal, go to the pictures, do whatever it is the kids want to do.”

She’s fully aware that she’s more fortunate than similar parents in England. “Is that fair? No. If the governments worked together and said, ‘Okay, what works in Scotland?’ Why can’t something similar be done in England.”

The Scottish Child Payment has broad cross-party political support. It cost £430m in the last financial year, paid for by higher tax rates in Scotland. Early evidence suggests it has slightly reduced the need for certain families to use foodbanks, external.

The Scottish government estimates that it will keep 60,000 children out of poverty this year, but child poverty levels in Scotland haven’t fallen since the policy was introduced.

“We know that inflation was very high for a few years and so costs were rising and households were facing a lot of pressure on their incomes,” says Hannah Randolph, an economist at Strathclyde University’s Fraser of Allander Institute. “So it’s possible the rate of child poverty would have been higher in the absence of the Scottish Child Payment.”