The effect of SNP's sanctimony about people in poverty? A 200,000 increase

Scotland’s poor were entitled to feel exploited. So much emphasis on poverty, so little understanding of its complexity or cures. Just words, empty words, delivered with all the passion of the speaking clock, culminating in the mandatory gimmick.

Ms Robison was going to lift people out of poverty, stop them entering poverty, eradicate child poverty, close the poverty-related educational attainment gap, and every linguistic variation thereof. If it sounded familiar, it’s because the script does not change. Neither, unfortunately, do the numbers.

According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, “poverty in Scotland fell rapidly from 1999 to 2012, from 24 per cent (1.2 million people) to a low of 18 per cent (900,000 people). Over the following decade the trend in the… relative poverty rate has reversed, creeping back up to 21 per cent in 2020-23 (1.1 million people)”.

Rowntree continued: “The Scottish Government remains some way off reaching its 2030/31 child poverty reduction targets, with relative poverty, absolute poverty and persistent poverty all needing to close by more than ten percentage points.”

No silver bullet

The least that can be said of that record is that Ms Robison’s pious insistence that addressing poverty has been the Scottish Government’s guiding mission simply is not true. That shows no signs of changing, if it is at the expense of any more favoured or electorally influential interest group. So spare us the sanctimony.

No political party has the silver bullet with which to slay poverty and all face dilemmas about how to balance its demands with other political pressures. Alighting on a single strand of the poverty debate in order to pretend it is the litmus test of virtue is insulting to the poor.

Of course, the Scottish Government has done some decent things, notably the Scottish Child Payment which really does make a difference. Equally, there is much they could have done but chose not to. At this point, it is helpful to look back to the period when a sensible woman, Naomi Eisenstadt, was Nicola Sturgeon’s “poverty tsar”.

Ms Eisenstadt understood the complexities of poverty and had been deeply involved in the Blair government’s agenda, particularly through the Sure Start programme for youngest children. Some of what she recommended to the Scottish Government happened but most of it didn’t.

Winter fuel payment ‘absolutely outrageous’

Her big recommendations, like reforming council tax, stopping housing budget cuts, funding local councils properly and challenging “universalism”, all went unheeded. Then she left. That is a measure of the extent to which the Scottish Government prioritised poverty.

Incidentally, Ms Eisenstadt held strong views on the universal Winter Fuel Payment. “It’s absolutely outrageous,” she said. “I don’t even have to apply for it. It just lands in my bank account.” And that was last week’s “moral high ground” on which SNP ministers chose to fight – on the other side of the argument!

It is fair to point out that the past decade saw the Tories in power at Westminster, so responsibility was shared, though all Ms Eisenstadt’s recommendations I have referred to were devolved. Equally it is fair to point out that the last sustained assault on poverty and particularly child poverty was during the period of Labour administrations in both locations.

Two-child benefit cap stunt

The logic of all this, if Ms Robison’s utterances carried sincerity, might be to display a little humility. Maybe, she and her colleagues might reason, there is an opportunity to burnish their meagre credentials by working with a UK Government which, on all historic evidence, will help millions out of poverty, given time though certainly not overnight.

Instead we had the gimmick about the two-child cap, which will help absolutely nobody in the period covered by Ms Robison’s Budget, and was added at the last minute so as to avoid inspection and costing. I fear that is how seriously they actually rate poverty as priority.

As the Fraser of Allander Institute put it: “This was clearly a last-minute addition to the Budget. The Scottish Fiscal Commission stated they received it too late to add to their figures, and too late for any analysis to be included in the Budget document itself… This lack of detail is troubling given the potential cost of funding this is likely to be in the region of £200 million.

“There are far too many unknowns to say anything conclusive about impact, but there is no doubt that it would boost efforts towards the statutory child poverty targets – albeit not by nearly enough to meet them by just doing this alone.”

The institute added: “How will the Scottish Government fund this? Well, they may be hoping that they won’t have to, and the UK Government will announce the abolition of the policy (which is widely expected to happen at some point) before the Scottish Government have to put their hands in their pocket.”

The many forms of poverty

If that doesn’t happen in time, it will be another £200m to be found from public services which the poor rely on disproportionately. And so the cycle goes on. Meanwhile, it ‘s just a meaningless announcement in the interests of a headline which does nothing for the poor.

Poverty comes in many forms. Poverty of expectation. Poverty of aspiration. Poverty of education and skills. Poverty of housing. Poverty of parenting and so endlessly on. None of these can be separated from the others and any government serious about reducing poverty levels must take complexity and long-term commitment as its starting points.

Unless Holyrood, with some degree of consensus, is prepared to embark on that long haul, Scotland’s poor will be condemned to be with us, no matter how often “poverty” is mentioned in any speech.