Will party manifestos meet Scotland’s child poverty targets?

Scale of the challenge

All parties seeking votes in the Scottish Parliament election on 7 May have now set out their Manifesto pledges. Decisions made in the next Scottish Parliament will shape the life chances of a generation of Scotland’s children. Every child in Scotland deserves to grow up in a warm home where there is enough to eat, with the opportunity to flourish. That is why all political parties at Holyrood passed legislation in 2017 to set ambitious targets to reduce relative child poverty to less than 10% by 2030/31.

Progress to tackle poverty has been too slow since 2017. In practice, meeting the target will mean giving around 100,000 further children a lifeline out of poverty by the end of the parliament.

Our previous analysis has shown that a bold policy agenda, backed by investment, can deliver better childhoods and brighter futures for the more than 1 in 5 children in Scotland currently living in poverty. There is also clear evidence that action now — on social security, decent incomes from work, affordable housing and high-quality public services — are investments that can transform outcomes for families across Scotland, and our society and economy.

Our polling published earlier this year has also highlighted that bolstering families’ economic security is the key to restoring the public’s trust in politics.

In this context, we have reviewed the parties’ Manifestos and considered whether they meet the moment for Scotland’s children and our nation’s future.

Commitment to tackling child poverty

In different ways, most major party Manifestos highlight poverty, and its causes and consequences, as key issues for the next parliament. The SNP has continued to describe eradicating child poverty as its ‘defining mission’. On a Daily Record front page, Labour Leader Anas Sarwar has explicitly committed to meet the statutory targets and lift 100,000 children out of poverty. The Conservatives have said that they will continue to support the poverty-reduction aims of the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017, while the Greens and Liberal Democrats have recommended focusing on tackling the deepest poverty. Nearly a decade on from a cross-party vote which enshrined child poverty reduction targets in law, tackling poverty in Scotland is still a uniting moral, social and economic prerogative across the political spectrum.

But rhetorical commitment to tackling child poverty has not been in short supply, it is action that is required. And whether taken individually or even together, the manifestos do not contain the scale of action, or ambition, to meet those targets. Without course correction, the next Parliament will not deliver its promises to the electorate, nor will the next Scottish Government meet the legal requirements the Parliament has put them under. Critically, it will impact on children who will continue to miss out on the secure childhood that every child deserves.

There is some encouragement in that there are unifying features of parties’ platforms that we know, if significantly ramped up from where they stand in the manifestos, can radically improve the futures of our children and country.

Employment and job quality

All of the Manifestos emphasise getting more people into 'good jobs'. Increasing employment is a principal poverty reduction strategy for the Conservatives, Reform, Labour and the Liberal Democrats.

We agree that parental employment is one of the most powerful levers available to reduce child poverty, but only if the jobs on offer are genuinely good ones. With around three-quarters of children in poverty in Scotland now living in a working household, work is no longer a reliable route out of poverty. Progress therefore depends not just on supporting more parents into work, but on tackling low pay, insecurity and inflexibility in the sectors where parents are most likely to be employed and where the risk of poverty is highest. Our modelling in Meeting the Moment found that increasing 20,000 parents' working hours and supporting 50,000 parents into work at the Real Living Wage could lift 60,000 children out of poverty, with broader benefits for those in deep and very deep poverty.

Nothing within the specific commitments proposed across the political spectrum will deliver labour-market change at this scale. Manifestos lean heavily on supply-side measures such as training, coaching and employability support for the individual. Yet Scotland has multiple labour markets across the country, with very different problems in each. In places with low job availability or low job quality, no amount of individual employability support will be enough without deliberate action to generate good jobs. A serious plan to reduce child poverty through work needs to rebalance toward the demand-side using economic development, fair work conditionality, the net zero transition and the care economy to create good jobs in the places that need them most. It is also vital to give local authorities the flexibility and resources to respond to the labour market they actually have.

Childcare

Expanding access to childcare is a key offer for parents across SNP, Labour, Greens and Conservative Manifestos, with different delivery models and at different scales.

We welcome this shared recognition that the current offer does not meet the needs of families. Despite the significant uplift in funded hours for 3- and 4-year-olds in the last parliament, families in poverty still struggle to afford and access early years childcare, particularly for younger children. The cost of childcare is still locking too many low-income parents out of the labour market and into poverty. An expanded offer that creates a real option to take up work, increase hours, or move into more secure employment for these families would have the most significant poverty-reduction impact.

That is why the next expansion of funded early years childcare in Scotland should focus on 1- and 2-year-olds. It should also be targeted first at families on low incomes, with flexibility for non-standard hours, shift patterns and school holidays. We also think that it should be an income-based contribution model so that childcare costs are never the reason that a parent cannot take a job, and that investment is genuinely targeted at reducing poverty. This is where the anti-poverty return on investment is greatest and in Scotland's current fiscal context, it is also the only serious way to prioritise public money. Starting with low-income families ensures that every pound spent is directed where it will make the biggest difference to child poverty, rather than being spread thinly across families who are already more able to access and afford childcare.

In this context Scottish Greens' proposal for universal, fully-funded early years childcare raises questions even for those who support the ambition behind it. A universal, free offer at this scale would be among the most expensive commitments in any manifesto. Fundamentally this is the major block on further expansion at this time — the cost of that expansion, yet the majority of the benefit of a universal expansion would go to families with higher incomes. Prioritising low-income families first is not a retreat from ambition, it is how the ambition reaches the families it is meant to help.  We agree that children in Scotland should have a right to a universal provision of early learning and childcare but we don’t think it needs to be universally free.

It is also concerning that some of the proposals concentrate on solutions that will disadvantage those who are out of work, for example for expansions that are only for working families or through tax-free childcare.

The expansion of childcare in the next parliament also needs to connect deliberately with employability support, which is currently failing parents: they make up less than a fifth of those receiving help via No One Left Behind, despite parental employment being central to the child poverty targets. Without that connection, a more generous childcare offer risks reaching the families who already find it easiest to use it and are better off as a result, rather than those we most need to reach.

Social security

Many of the parties emphasise getting more people into good jobs as their central solution to poverty, and downplay (or criticise) the role of social security. Indeed, it is almost presented as if it is a choice: you can either invest in social security or focus on supporting people into work. Bluntly, this is as harmful as it is wrong. The ‘work first’ approach of the last UK Government did not work, and repeating the mistakes of the past and expecting change will do nothing to improve people’s lives.

Even if the next Scottish Government can deliver a step change in levels of employment, working hours and wages for parents, this can only take us so far. For parents who cannot work or work enough hours, for example due to having a baby, disability or caring responsibilities, the social security system is the solution to their hardship. This is preventative policy and a crucial part of our social contract. To ignore that is to leave many households behind.

Social security’s efficacy is underlined by the Scottish Child Payment. It is estimated to be keeping 50,000 children out of poverty in the first year of the new parliament (2026/27). It is a highly effective lever that provides targeted support to increase the incomes of families living in poverty. Recent evidence has also dispelled misplaced concerns around the interaction between the payment and work, with the IFS finding that ‘the evidence suggests that concerns that [it] creates work disincentives are overplayed’. If the next Scottish Government aspires to meet the child poverty reduction targets they will have to increase the Scottish Child Payment and maximise take-up.

It is in this context disappointing that there is so little in the manifestos on the positives of the social security system. No more so than regarding the system of disability payments.

Nearly half of all children in poverty live in a household where someone is disabled. Our recent polling showed that 30% of disabled people were not confident that they can cover essential costs, nearly twice the proportion of non-disabled people (18%). In this context, it is concerning that no Manifesto except the Scottish Greens’ includes substantial new proposals to ensure that people with disabilities can have a decent, dignified standard of living. And others take the opportunity to make a calculated attack on the disability payments system, without any heed to the marginalisation of disabled people in our society, nor indeed the underlying inadequacy of the payments themselves.

Mental health support

The scandal of Scotland’s 26-year gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest and poorest areas, and the stark health inequalities that drive it, are too often absent from election campaign debates.

In this context, it is positive that there is broad recognition across several Manifestos that support for people struggling with their mental health is not fit for purpose. Mental ill-health is more prevalent among people living in the most deprived areas of Scotland, and the debilitating effects of a mental illness can be a significant barrier to getting a good job and holding one down. This creates a vicious cycle for too many people.

On top of action to tackle poverty as a root cause of poor mental health, we need to bring down waits for specialist support for people who need it, invest in new ways to help people to recover and live well with mental illness, and support young people who are struggling much earlier in their lives. There are promising proposals across Manifestos on this, but we need to see a comprehensive package that goes beyond crisis care, backed by increased investment, in the next Parliament.

Housing

Child poverty levels in Scotland are lower than in England and Wales in large part because of lower housing costs, and the Scottish Government’s comparative focus on social homes building has played an important role in this. As in other areas, all the parties recognise the importance of housing but have varying levels of ambition and focus.

Each of the parties have varying degrees of ambition in the number of houses that they seek to build, and differing focuses on the level of ‘affordable’ housing within that. For the poverty reducing potential of housing to be fully realised, we believe they will have to concentrate public subsidy on social housing. We have also argued for reform in the way that the affordable housing supply is distributed to maximise the impact on poverty levels.

There is also broad recognition that the planning system is acting as a drag on housebuilding at the moment. And while new support, via agencies or otherwise, to ease housing developments could help, they won’t if they simply create an additional tier of bureaucracy rather than appropriately funding planning teams to process claims more quickly.

There are also concerning proposals to further impose hardship on those impacted by the migration system. The solution to all people in Scotland having the decent home that we all deserve is to invest in the social housing that we need, turn over every stone to bring existing houses into use whether through vacant properties or second homes, and ultimately to create a healthy diverse housing market. Creating further hardship for some of the most marginalised people in our communities will simply harm those individuals and put pressure on other public services.

Tax

Clearly, in the current constrained fiscal environment, spending commitments at the scale needed to make a difference will require tough prioritisation. It will also require a bold rewire of the economy - and our tax system - to create new parameters that can make delivery of more ambitious policy options possible.

It is positive to see references to council tax reform across Manifestos, but bold cross-party action to create a fairer system where everyone pays their fair share now needs to follow warm words. Calls for consensus are a distraction to prevent action. If politics waited for perfect consensus on every issue, nothing would happen. The status quo is regressive and subsidising better-off households, and needs to change.

More broadly, in several Manifestos, reducing or keeping tax low is framed as a cost of living intervention. Economic growth is touted as the route to deliver stronger public services and reduce poverty through job creation. However, outside the Scottish Greens’ Manifesto, there are no game-changing proposals that would raise significant additional revenue that could fund measures to reduce poverty, and assumptions about growth remain uncertain. Cuts to income tax will also disproportionately benefit better-off households. In the context of voters’ expectations for Scotland, which are rightly higher than the limited plans set out in many Manifestos, a serious reckoning is needed on how to fund the changes that the public wants to see.

Conclusion

Whoever wins the election in just a few days’ time will have a difficult task on their hands to match the rhetoric of their campaigns with the delivery that government demands. The Scottish Parliament will also have a major test of its credibility. With public disaffection with politics at concerningly high levels, hardship prevalent across our society, and high demands on public services coupled with low expectations of politicians to deliver, it is a daunting task.

But taking radical action to drive down child poverty and provide greater security for families in Scotland could be a key part in rebuilding that trust. The manifestos often diagnose the right areas for action, many of which we note here, but to deliver the better Scotland that meeting our ambitions on child poverty reduction dictates, the next Scottish Government will have to do much more. The parties holding them to account in the Parliament will also have to take a more interventionist role by championing more radical action.

Politics across the UK, indeed the world, show that the status quo is cracking. The next Scottish Government and Parliament must grasp this thistle and deliver a fairer Scotland free from poverty as soon as possible.