Publications

March 2025

The Poverty and Inequality Commission has published its Strategic Plan for 2025 to 2027.

This Strategic Plan sets out the Commission’s mission, and the vision and principles that will guide our work over the next three years. It has been developed with our Experts by Experience Panel.

The Plan also gives three Strategic Priorities for the Commission’s work, these are:

• Strategic Priority 1: Policy-making – We will work to ensure that reducing poverty and inequality is central to policy-making in Scotland, and that policy-making addresses the structural causes of poverty and inequality.
• Strategic Priority 2: Child Poverty – We will keep the focus on Scotland’s 2030 child poverty targets, by advising on actions to be included in the 2026-2031 child poverty delivery plan, scrutinising progress, and challenging where more is needed to meet the targets.
• Strategic Priority 3: Implementation –  We will encourage a focus on implementation of policies and actions, promoting use of data and evidence to inform delivery and understand impact.

Download: Poverty and Inequality Commission Strategic Plan 2025-2027 (pdf, 1.7 mb)

October 2024

As part of its approach to the Commission’s 2023-24 scrutiny of the Scottish Government’s progress in reducing child poverty, the Commission wanted to hear from parents and carers who were a member of the Scottish Government’s ‘priority family types’. These are households types who are at greater risk of poverty.

The Commission worked with eight organisations to organise workshop discussions (and in one case a survey) to gather parent and carer participant views on:

• What policies to reduce child poverty they were aware of
• How well they felt policies were working
• What else they felt was needed to reduce child poverty

This report summarises the views of participants on the three topics above, expanding on the material the Commission published earlier in 2024 as part of its 2023-24 child poverty scrutiny. The Commission is very grateful to all the participants in our workshops who took time to discuss these issues, and the organisations who we worked with to arrange them.

Download: Report of workshops with priority families in Scotland and their ideas to reduce child poverty (pdf, 422kb)

June 2024

The Poverty and Inequality Commission’s Annual Report covers the period from 1 April 2023 until 31 March 2024.  It looks back at the work the Commission has carried out in the last 12 months, how it aligns with the Commission’s strategic priorities, and how the Commission has spent its budget.

Download: Poverty and Inequality Commission – Annual Report 2023-24

4 June 2024

The Poverty and Inequality Commission has published its Child Poverty Scrutiny Report 2023-24. The report sets out the Commission’s view on progress in 2023-24 towards meeting Scotland’s statutory child poverty targets.

Download Child Poverty Scrutiny Report 2023-24 Executive Summary (pdf, 1.27MB)

Download the full Child Poverty Scrutiny Report 2023-24 (pdf, 3.12MB)

This year, the Commission focused its scrutiny by looking more closely at the Scottish Government’s ‘priority family types’. These are the six family types that are at higher risk of poverty. The Commission worked with eight organisations who work directly with people from priority family types to get families’ views on their awareness of Scottish Government policies designed to reduce poverty, how well they felt these policies were working, and what else they felt was needed. The Commission has also published a separate report giving more detail on the views and suggestions of participants.

The Commission’s scrutiny report makes four recommendations for the Scottish Government:

• Recommendation 1: The Scottish Government should convene and lead a national cross-party and civil society agreement to develop a shared six year strategy to meet the 2030 child poverty targets. This cross-party approach should consider the choices that need to be made around tax and spending.
• Recommendation 2: The Scottish Government should reprioritise funding to ensure that the necessary resources are made available to deliver both its existing commitments and future actions to tackle child poverty. This will require the Scottish Government to reprioritise budgets across portfolios and consider the eligibility criteria for different services and support.
• Recommendation 3: The Scottish Government should act quickly on the recommendations set out in the Commission’s report How better tax policy can reduce poverty and inequality.
• Recommendation 4: The Scottish Government should clarify and further develop how the priority family types are used to inform policy development, implementation and monitoring in policy areas related to the three key drivers of poverty.

In preparing its own annual child poverty progress report, the Scottish Government must consult the Poverty and Inequality Commission on the progress that has been made towards meeting the child poverty targets and what more is needed. The Scottish Government’s Best Start, Bright Futures Tackling Child Poverty Progress Report 2023-24 can be found here.