stewartb
Scotland in Union means Poverty in Union?
The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) has this on its web site: ‘Poverty: facts and figures’. It notes: ‘Poverty risk also varies across UK nations and regions, with the highest rates in the West Midlands, inner London and North West England, and considerably lower rates in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Eastern England.’
On May 21, responding to the UK Work and Pensions Secretary’s speech that day, the Chief Executive of CPAG said:
‘The elephant in the room today was the two-child limit which is pushing child poverty to a new high on this government’s watch and leaving children without the life chances the Secretary of State wants for them. Unless government scraps the policy in its forthcoming child poverty strategy, the number of kids in poverty will reach 5 million by the end of this parliament and a generation of children will have been betrayed. If ‘fairness, equality and opportunity’ are what matters to the Secretary of State, the two-child limit must be removed and ministers must step back from disability benefit cuts which can only mean more child poverty.’ (my emphasis)
The Scottish Government agrees with the CPAG and is working to mitigate the worst impacts of Westminster policies that damage the social safety net, first under the Tories and now under a Labour government.
In the New Statesman (May 21 ) there is an article headed ‘Child poverty is a scar on our national conscience’ written by the British Labour Party’s sage in North Britain, Gordon Brown.
He rails against the present extent of child poverty; he lists a range of people who like him are arguing for action to sort it; and he identifies causes and then actions that could/should be taken by the government in Westminster to fix it, including how to fund these.
However, despite inaction and delay by Labour in Westminster (see below), Mr Brown is loyal to party to his core, stating: ‘To their credit, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves set up the Child Poverty Review to redeem the Labour promise “to reduce child poverty this parliament” and to end the need for reliance on food banks.‘
Credit? Typically, Mr Brown makes ZERO mention of the tangible mitigating actions and supportive policy position of the Scottish Government – the Bain Principle is alive and well amongst the British Labour Party elite in North Britain even on something as important as reducing child poverty!
What will Mr Brown’s reaction be to this extract from the Guardian given in an earlier btl post in this thread: ‘The Guardian has been told that the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, and Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, have pushed the (child poverty) strategy back to at least the autumn budget and possibly later. Reeves is understood to be concerned about the cost implications while McSweeney has questioned the political benefits.‘ Not for the first time will he ignore a rebuff from his party’s current leadership and simply move on to another issue, still a Labour loyalist and unionist?
Scotland in Union and Poverty in Union: time for ‘traditional Labour voters’ in Scotland to take stock! If they are scunnered with the British Labour Party in government in Westminster with its huge enabling – but wasted majority in the context of addressing issues such as child poverty – will they opt to vote for Reform UK because they prioritise Scotland in Union above all else and therefore tolerate unnecessary Poverty in Union?
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Another one costing Scotland.
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-press-and-journal-inverness-highlands-and-islands/20250524/282398405335384?srsltid=AfmBOor350AiagCY3eUKDuXNX68Trv4iqmEwkG8ioE1p74ezsDrqyPQa
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Very useful
thanks
On this tomorrow
John
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O/T or at best tangential! The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) and other charities concerned with child poverty recently commissioned a public opinion survey to gauge support for the Westminster government to act to reduce child poverty levels. They contracted the polling organisation Public First. This post is about the ‘odd’ ways in which polling companies appear to this lay person to conduct and then manipulate data in order to generate ‘representative’ and statistically significant results.
See https://www.publicfirst.co.uk/widespread-public-support-for-government-action-to-reduce-child-poverty-new-research-shows.html
On research scope and methodology for this survey, Public First explains: ‘Fieldwork ran from 11 March 2025 to 14 March 2025 and surveyed 2,008 adults in the UK in an anonymous, online poll. All results are weighted using Iterative Proportional Fitting, or ‘Raking’. The results are weighted by interlocking age & gender, region and social grade to Nationally Representative Proportions. This work was commissioned by the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG).’ According to the CPAG’s website: ‘ Public First conducted a nationally representative poll of 2,008 adults for Child Poverty Action Group, Save the Children, Barnardo’s and The Children’s Society, from 11th-14th March 2025.’
Sorry about the technical intro but important for context. Amongst the parameters used in tabulated reporting of results, are ‘cross tab’ responses with ‘political groups’. Public First explains the groupings it uses:
‘We define Labour voters considering a vote for Reform, for the Greens or for the Lib Dems as voters who voted Labour in 2024 and now rank themselves 5 or higher on a scale of 0-10 when asked “How likely would you be to consider voting for the following parties if a general election was called tomorrow?” using the following categories:
The results tables refer to 172’ unweighted’ and 181 ‘weighted’ responses from Scotland. There is no mention of respondents having or now intending to vote SNP.
Taken at face value, and based on the data reported, no SNP voters at the 2024 GE were surveyed. Moreover, based on the data, when ‘voting intentions’ are assessed, no voter in Scotland intends to vote SNP.
A similar situation pertains for actual (2024) and intended voters for Plaid Cymru in Wales.
And for completeness, how do the individual respondents to the Public First survey recorded from Northern Ireland – albeit small in number – get assigned to the political groupings when none of the political parties (not sure about Reform UK) even stand candidates in NI!
I am no polling expert: perhaps someone can explain the rationale here. Does manipulation to ensure ‘statistical significance’ permit the – on the face of it – illogical? Statistics are remarkable tools!
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Thanks for this Stewart.
Regret I’m too tired to try to answer your question but I note with interest, support strongest in the Scottish subset of the sample. I’ll be telling my SNP colleagues who think there are few votes in this.
John
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I see The Observer is reporting Keir Starmer now wants to scrap the two-child cap and it will cost the UK government £3.5bn a year!
This post is about an interesting finding by the Institute for Fiscal Studies who have been looking at what the Scottish Government might do to mitigate the two-child cap in Scotland.
https://ifs.org.uk/articles/two-child-limit-mitigation-scotland-would-help-larger-poor-families-policy-design-could…
“Two-child limit mitigation in Scotland would help larger poor families but policy design could harm work incentives”
continues
“In its costings, the Scottish Fiscal Commission assumes the mitigation payments option (Scottish Fiscal Commission, 2025). Implementing mitigation in this manner would be similar to how the Scottish Child Payment is administered – the Scottish Child Payment is paid only to families with children on Universal Credit, meaning that those who get any amount of Universal Credit get the full Scottish Child Payment, while those who earn slightly too much to be entitled to Universal Credit get nothing.”
continues
“Benefits cliff-edges and financial incentives
Implementing the removal of the two-child limit in this way would worsen already perverse incentives created by the Scottish Child Payment, as shown in Figure 1. This graph shows annual net income for an example couple with three children where one partner works 40 hours a week at the National Living Wage worth £11.44 in 2024–25. It shows how the family’s income changes as the other partner’s hours of work (also at the National Living Wage) change. As they work more, the family’s net income rises, although some of the additional earnings are lost via higher taxes and reduced Universal Credit amounts. Under the current system (shown in green), if this parent works more than 23 hours then their income suddenly drops, because at this point their earnings rise too high to get any Universal Credit – and so they are no longer eligible for the Scottish Child Payment, worth £4,176 per year (£1,392 per child). This ‘cliff-edge’ means there is a region in which the parent could work more but the family ends up with lower total after-tax-and-benefit income. If the two-child limit mitigation was paid in a similar way to Scottish Child Payment (shown in yellow), this would mean an even larger cliff-edge, so that the family could lose more than £7,500 a year simply by working 23 hours per week rather than 22 hours per week. The larger cliff-edge means this parent would have to work over 40 hours per week to increase their family’s income above what they get when working 22 hours per week. If a family had four children rather than three, then the size of the cliff-edge would be even bigger – almost £12,500 a year, equivalent to working an extra 29 hours per week for someone on the National Living Wage.”
Their article goes on to say there are other benefits which operate in a similar manner, and concludes the Scottish Government is in a difficult position!
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O/T Again John…..sorry! I thought you might find this of interest.
Suspensions and Permanent Exclusions in English Schools are 25 times higher than in Scottish Schools!!!
According to the most up to date Gov.UK education statistics for England, in the 2023/24 spring term they ‘shockingly’ had 295,559 suspensions from schools, which is actually a decrease from the 2023/24 autumn term when the figure was a ‘controversial’ 346,300 suspensions.
This newest figure calculates as 35 suspensions for every 1000 students in England.
There were also 3,107 students permanently excluded from schools in England.
Suspensions and permanent exclusions in England, Spring term 2023/24 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK
In Scotland for the term year 2022/23 (Scottish statistics are calculated biennially) we had 11,676 suspensions, as the prof would say, all things being equal, English figures should be roughly 116,760. The Scottish data highlights a massive decrease from 2010/11 figures which stood at 26,844. Although this newest data shows an increase from 2020/21 where the figure was 8,323, this was during Covid when schools were affected by lockdown.
This up to date figure calculates as 16.6 suspensions for every 1000 students in Scotland.
There was also 1 student permanently excluded from a school in Scotland.
School exclusion statistics – gov.scot
According to Scottish Centre for Administrative Data Research ( SCADR) where they use the 2021/22 ‘disgraceful’ figures for England.
“There has been marked divergence in the practice and policy of school exclusions between Scotland and England. Permanent exclusions in Scotland have almost been eliminated, from 21 cases in 2012/13 down to 1 single case in 2022/23. Meanwhile in England, they have increased from 4,632 in 2012/13 to 6,495 in 2021/22”.
https://www.scadr.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Data%20Insight%20v4%20-Understanding%20exclusions%20in%20Scottish%20secondary%20schools%20JB%20MT_0.pdf
Although no one wants to see a child suspended from school, is this not a newsworthy enough story about how our SNP Government and Scottish teachers are working for our Scottish school children and their future prospects?
Answer……No!
The London controlled media in Scotland will never report on a positive for Scotland, especially if it shows that the SNP Government are out performing the rest of ‘their’ union!!!
JB
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sorry John, correction, where I put In Scotland for the term year 2022/23 (Scottish statistics are calculated biennially) we had 11,676 suspensions, as the prof would say, all things being equal, English figures should be roughly 116,760. The figure should actually be 116,676!!!
JB
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Sorted
good to see someone else goes too fast for 100% accuracy
John
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