In the Guardian today:
Local child poverty rates across the UK correlate very strongly with the percentage of families affected by the two-child benefit cap, research has found, indicating that the controversial policy is a key factor behind children growing up in deprivation.
The study, carried out by Loughborough University for the End Child Poverty Coalition, will heap pressure on Labour over the party’s refusal to abolish the cap, which limits universal credit and child tax credit to a family’s first two children, if they come into power.
The limit can cost families more than £3,000 a year for each additional child, with earlier research showing scrapping the policy would take 300,000 children out of poverty around the country.
The new study was based on existing government statistics for children living in low-income families – defined as those with incomes below 60% of the local median income – but adjusted these for housing costs to avoid underestimating poverty rates in places such as London.
The Loughborough researchers have the level of child poverty at 24% in Scotland, in Wales at 29% and the UK average at 30%: https://endchildpoverty.org.uk/child-poverty-2024/
Not unusually, these English researchers are not well-informed on developments just to the north.
It is remarkable that the Loughborough researchers do not seem to know about the Scottish Child Payment after two years since its launch. On checking the data tables for constituencies, I see that the most recent data is not for 22/23 but 21/22 and that matters in the light of the Scottish Child Payment above.
Though with limited control over the economy, the SNP Government has taken steps with the Scottish Child Payment, described by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in November 2022, 9 months after the Loughborough research’s last data collection, as a ‘watershed already showing that poverty can be tackled with political will.’
The Child Poverty Action group is confident that child poverty is already falling in Scotland, way below that in the rest of the UK, and that the figures for 2022/2023 and, especially 2023/2024, will reflect that
Only the SNP has had the political will to introduce the child payment and only the SNP has consistently called for an end to that other major cause of child poverty, the two-child benefit limit, which the Loughborough researchers are calling for, but which Labour conspicuously refuses to promise an end to.
Sources:
Talking-up Scotland / Facts on NHS, Crime, ferries and everything else you can think of 
And, of course the Guardian’s two ‘Scotland is bad’ correspondents, Severin Carrel and Libby Brooks who know about the Scottish Child Benefit payments will not correct the researchers.
Alasdair Macdonald
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Severin Carrel, ie Labour parliamentary candidate Severin Carrel. What a suprise.
Dottie
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If referring to the Grauniad’s “Two-child benefit cap is ‘key driver of child poverty’ in UK, research suggests” as penned by Peter Walker Senior political correspondent, I note the recent tweet from the twit stating “It’s the BBC’s seven-way election debate tonight. Who’s taking part? What will they be trying to achieve? What will be their message? We have all the answers*” with the asterisk referring to “Educated guesses”..
I mean… seriously…- Penny Mordaunt Trad Con, Angela Rayner new Con, Daisy Cooper Neo Con, Nigel Farage TotalCon…. and Stephen Flynn SNP, Rhun ap Iorwerth PC and Carla Denyer Green as the only non-con-artists in the room…..
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