Exclusive:John Swinney rules out further hikes to flagship Scottish Child Payment - here's why

The First Minister has made eradicating child poverty his number one priority, with the Scottish Child Payment used as a top-up benefit for families, delivered by the Scottish Government.

The payment, which increased to £26.70 a week in April last year and will only be hiked by 45p a week next year, will now only rise by the rate of inflation - with the First Minister stressing any additional funding that could be used to further hike the benefit could be better spent on other measures to tackle child poverty.

Asked by The Scotsman’s The Steamie podcast if above-inflation rises to the Scottish Child Payment have been maxed out, Mr Swinney said: “I take that view.”

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He said: “If you go back to the start of the discussions about the child payment, the Scottish Child Payment started off as a campaign called ‘give me five’ and it was about a £5 weekly payment.

“If you put that too high, you create a disincentive to enter the labour market.”

Mr Swinney added: “I believe, fundamentally, that families will be in a better position if parents can get into well-paid, sustainable, good quality employment.

“You’ve got to maintain a very careful balance about the level that you let the Scottish Child Payment to reach or you walk into that disincentive. I don’t think that’s desirable.”

But Mr Swinney stressed “to maintain the effectiveness of the payment”, the Scottish Government would “have to increase it with inflation”, warning that otherwise “the real value of it gets eroded”.

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The First Minister has now explicitly ruled out calls from anti-poverty campaigners to hike the benefit up to £40.

He said: “People have been saying to me you should put it up to £40 a week. I don’t think that would be the right thing to do.

“If you are using the argument that there is money available to put it up to £40 a week, if I had that money available to me, I would rather put it into flexible childcare or into travel support to get people to work or into employability schemes.”