February 2018
The Poverty and Inequality Commission’s first report sets out the Commission’s advice to the Scottish Government on its first Child Poverty Delivery Plan. It sets out some general principles that should be included in the Delivery Plan, identifies three levers that are likely to have the biggest impact on child poverty and recommends some other elements that should be included in order to improve quality of life for children living in poverty.
Updated April 2019
Download: Advice on the Scottish Government’s Child Poverty Delivery Plan 2018
Download: Advice on the Scottish Government’s Child Poverty Delivery Plan 2018: Executive Summary
Updated 22 May 2018
The Poverty and Inequality Commission’s Child Poverty Delivery Plan advice draws on analysis carried out by IPPR Scotland, looking at the costs and impacts of using social security interventions to reduce child poverty in Scotland. In its original analysis IPPR Scotland recalculated the poverty line for each intervention based on the intervention being introduced UK-wide. IPPR has subsequently undertaken further analysis which recalculates the poverty line if the intervention was only introduced in Scotland. This has an impact on the cost and effects of some of the policy interventions. The updated analysis from IPPR Scotland can be found here https://www.ippr.org/research/publications/child-poverty-in-scotland .
The only place where this revised analysis makes a difference to the figures used in the Commission’s advice is on page 25, where the advice discusses the cost of reaching the 10% relative poverty target using social security alone. The new analysis ,which assumes the intervention is introduced in Scotland only, identifies a significantly lower cost of meeting the target: £2.6 billion instead of £3.8 billion. This is because the Scottish Government’s targets for reducing relative child poverty are against a UK-wide median income and introducing the intervention in Scotland alone has a smaller effect on the UK median income.
This new analysis provides a more useful and appropriate basis to support action to address child poverty in Scotland, so the Commission will update its advice shortly to reflect the new analysis and clarify the basis of the figures used in its advice.