Campaigners at the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) in Scotland are calling for tax and spending decisions to do more to prioritise hard up families ahead of tomorrow’s Scottish budget.
High inflation pushed the cost of raising a child to £166,000 for a couple and £220,000 for a lone parent in 2023 but the enduring impact of benefit cuts and ongoing price rises have left many parents unable to give their children what the public says is a minimum acceptable living standard, new research shows.
Racial inequalities in child poverty are particularly stark, with over half of children from Black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds likely to grow up in poverty. Economic structures that reinforce gender inequality and entrench systemic racism mean that certain groups, including women, children and Black and minority ethnic families are much more likely to be living in poverty.
Our interviews show that claimants did not have the information they needed or wanted to understand how moving to UC would affect them. Such misinformation and misunderstanding are likely to be reasons some people are not moving to UC despite having a strong financial incentive to do so.
It’s right that benefits are uprated as usual but this should never have been in doubt and legislation mandating inflationary increases is needed as a basic protection for living standards. Struggling families have been worrying themselves sick for months about whether an unmanageable income cut was coming in order to provide the government with a rabbit-out-of-the-hat moment.
Ahead of the Autumn Statement, organisations representing children’s doctors, school leaders and social workers have joined Child Poverty Action Group in calling on the Chancellor to uprate benefits from April at least in line with September’s inflation rate as usual.