The Scottish Government is on track to miss its own child poverty targets by more than 100,000 children, new figures have revealed.
A report published by thinktank Resolution Foundation shows that extreme cuts to welfare by the UK government are pushing more families into poverty while Holyrood does not do enough to mitigate the impact.
Child poverty has been on the rise since 2011, researchers said, with 23 per cent of children in Scotland trapped in relative poverty in 2016-17. The Resolution Foundation analysis shows that the trend will continue over the next five years to hit a 20-year high of around 29 per cent by 2023-4.
This would be equivalent to an extra 60,000 children whose families are forced to survive on less than 60 per cent of the median household income.
John Dickie, head of Child Poverty Action Group Scotland, told The Big Issue the report should serve as “a real wake up call” for both governments to act with urgency.
He said: “The primary driver of rising child poverty is the extraordinary scale of the cuts to financial support for families, particularly working families, over the last few years. The freeze to child benefits, the two-child limit and the benefit cap are all having a massive impact and UK government needs to fundamentally rethink those policies – the benefits cash freeze in particular.”