Aberlour's response to the Scottish Government Budget Announcement

We welcome the Scottish Government’s commitment to tackling child poverty in yesterday’s (Wednesday 4th December 2024) Scottish Budget by taking steps to mitigate the cruel and unnecessary two child limit.

When implemented this will lift 15,000 children and their families out of poverty and will help make progress towards child poverty targets.

This is the right thing to do, and we urge the UK Government to take note and follow suit by scrapping this poverty creating policy altogether.

However, our poorest families need help right now and cannot wait until 2026 at the earliest for this commitment to take effect.

Scotland’s children have waited long enough and so we need action not intention.

Therefore, we urge the Scottish Government to use existing levers, such as increasing the value of the Scottish Child Payment, and urgently provide financial relief for families on the lowest incomes.

With 10,000 children and their families currently living in temporary accommodation, reversing the cuts to the affordable housing budget is a positive step that will help to tackle the housing emergency and reduce the need for temporary accommodation that too often acts as a poverty trap.

Again, this will take time to have any meaningful impact on families.

We welcomed the earlier announcement this week of an extension to the School Meal Debt fund to wipe out all existing school meal debt.

Extending free school meals to primary 6 and 7 pupils whose families receive the Scottish Child Payment will benefit thousands of children and their families.

Nonetheless, it still will not prevent school meal debt and hidden school hunger, in particular for high school aged children.

We continue to call on the Scottish Government to increase free school meal entitlement, at least to all families in receipt of the Scottish Child Payment, to end school meal debt and hidden school hunger for good.

We are also disappointed that there is no commitment in this budget to tackle the public debt crisis and the role it plays in trapping families in poverty.

There is clear evidence of the way public debt contributes to levels of child poverty and in order to reduce child poverty we must see action to alleviate the harm public debt causes to so many low-income families.

This Scottish Budget sets out admirable intention, but the First Minister and his government must urgently accelerate efforts to tackle child poverty.

SallyAnn Kelly OBE

Aberlour CEO