Kirsty Blackman

Kirsty Blackman

Scottish National Party — Aberdeen North

Speaking in the House of Commons on 8 December 2025

Debate

Child Poverty Strategy

Contribution

It is nice to hear the Secretary of State acknowledging that child poverty in Scotland is lower than it is in England, and that it is reducing. Scotland is the only part of the UK where child poverty is going down—that is according to the graph in the Government’s own document. The document is 113 pages long: 34 are blank or just references and 25 contain an explanation of the problem, so less than half of those pages are about what the Government are going to do. Of the policies included in the document, almost every single one has already been announced. Why have we waited a year and a half for a child poverty strategy that is frankly unambitious? The published strategy has no evaluation criteria, other than just the two headline measures that the Secretary of State mentioned. When the “Best Start, Bright Futures” policy document was published in Scotland, it had evaluation criteria alongside it. Will she lay out the evaluation criteria that she will use to ensure that these changes make a positive difference for people?

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