Professor Danny Dorling predicts Westminster will be forced to act on child poverty as we have in Scotland.

I asked the CabSec whether the UK Gov has recognised the positive impact of the Scottish Child Payment, and opened any discussions about making it UK-wide 👇 pic.twitter.com/HIn0nb2sYR

— Emma Roddick MSP (@EmmaRoddickSNP) June 17, 2025

Professor John Robertson OBA

From the Scottish Government yesterday:

More than 300,000 children supported by Scottish Child Payment

Social Security Scotland’s Scottish Child Payment is supporting 322,230 children across the country, newly published figures show.  Launched in February 2021, the Scotland-only benefit gives families with low incomes crucial financial support to help with the cost of raising children. The weekly payment of £27.15 is paid every four weeks for every eligible child under the age of 16 within a household. 

https://www.gov.scot/news/more-than-300-000-children-supported-by-scottish-child-payment/

If Labour in England and Wales did the same, they’d lift around 3.5 million children out of poverty.

Why is this so important?

Eradicating child poverty costs nothing in the long term because everything depends on it

First, from Edinburgh University researchers in 2022:

People who have suffered extreme difficulties in childhood are more likely to commit crimes as adults than those who have not, a study suggests. Childhood experiences such as poverty, maltreatment, school exclusion and police contact are associated with serious offending and frequent criminal convictions in adulthood, the report found.¹

Second, from the Mental Health Foundation in 2010:

Children and adults living in households in the lowest 20% income bracket in Great Britain are two to three times more likely to develop mental health problems than those in the highest.

In 2004, evidence from the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Survey found that the prevalence of severe mental health problems was around three times higher among children in the bottom quintile of family income than among those in the top quintile.

Analysis of data from the Millennium Cohort Study in 2012 found children in the lowest income quintile to be 4.5 times more likely to experience severe mental health problems than those in the highest, suggesting that the income gradient in young people’s mental health has worsened considerably over the past decade.²

Third, from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health in 2022:

Children living in poverty are more likely to have poorer health outcomes including higher risk of mortality, poor physical health, and mental health problems.³

Fourth, from the Nuffield Trust in 2022:

Children are more likely to be obese or overweight in areas of England where there is more childhood poverty, lower breastfeeding rates and where fewer adults undertake physical exercise.⁴

Fifth, from BJPsych Open in 2022:

Poverty in adolescence is associated with later drug use.⁵

Sixth, from the Child Poverty Action Group in 2022:

The causal relationship between child poverty and educational outcomes is well established, with children from lower-income households less likely to achieve than their more affluent peers. This results in unequal life chances and futures, with children growing up in poverty earning less as adults.⁶

Seventh, from UK Government researchers in 2014:

Children from low-income backgrounds are less likely to progress in education and attend higher education institutions and disadvantaged children who start out as high-attainers are overtaken by their better-off peers who were initially average-attainers.⁷

Eighth, from the Lancet in 2022:

Children in care face adverse health outcomes throughout their life course compared with their peers. In England, over the past decade, the stark rise in the number of cared-for children has coincided with rising child poverty, a key risk factor for children entering care. We report evidence that rising child poverty rates might be contributing to an increase in children entering care. Children’s exposure to poverty creates and compounds adversity, driving poor health and social outcomes in later life. National anti-poverty policies are key to tackling adverse trends in children’s care entry in England.⁸

Think how much we might save if the above was far less true. Think of how much wealth would be generated by the thousands liberated and given a meaningful stake in a shared world.

I could go on. It’s endless. Being born into poverty makes everything more difficult, everything good less likely but eradicating child poverty, as a priority above all others, will pay off for all of us in creating a better society in all the places that matter.

Sources:

1. https://www.law.ed.ac.uk/news-events/news/children-exposed-poverty-and-trauma-more-likely-offend-adults#:~:text=Childhood%20experiences%20such%20as%20poverty,in%20adulthood%2C%20the%20report%20found.
2. https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/explore-mental-health/statistics/poverty-statistics
3. https://www.rcpch.ac.uk/resources/child-health-inequalities-position-statement
4. https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/nuffield-trust-child-obesity-levels-likely-to-be-higher-in-areas-with-more-poverty-and-lower-breastfeeding-rates
5. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bjpsych-open/article/poverty-in-adolescence-and-later-drug-use-disorders-understanding-the-mediation-and-interaction-effects-of-other-psychiatric-disorders/8522FB4CBD952B94F85A6161E47670EE
6. https://cpag.org.uk/news/there-only-so-much-we-can-do-school-staff-england#:~:text=The%20causal%20relationship%20between%20child,poverty%20earning%20less%20as%20adults.
7. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/smcpc-research-on-attainment-of-disadvantaged-children#:~:text=Disadvantaged%20children%20who%20start%20out,of%20the%20least%20deprived%20children.
8. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667%2822%2900065-2/fulltext

How unique is the Scottish Child Payment?

The Scottish Child Payment (SCP) is a devolved benefit introduced by the Scottish Government in February 2021, administered by Social Security Scotland. It provides low-income families with a weekly payment of £27.15 (as of the 2025/26 benefit year, paid every four weeks) for each eligible child under 16 years old. Eligibility requires the applicant or their partner to receive a qualifying benefit, such as Universal Credit, Child Tax Credit, or Working Tax Credit, and to live in Scotland. Unlike many benefits, there is no cap on the number of children per family, and it is not means-tested beyond the qualifying benefit requirement. The payment does not affect other UK or Scottish benefits and can be used flexibly for family costs. As of November 2025, it supports over 300,000 children, with total payouts exceeding £677 million since launch and a 94% take-up rate among eligible families.

Uniqueness in Europe

The SCP is highly unique in Europe due to its targeted design, generous value, and proven impact on child poverty. While most European countries offer universal or broad child allowances (e.g., France’s family allowances or Germany’s Kindergeld), these are typically smaller, universal payments not specifically aimed at low-income households. Means-tested supplements exist in places like Ireland (Supplementary Child Benefit) or Finland (housing-inclusive child support), but none match the SCP’s combination of:

• High weekly value: At £27.15 per child (£1,411 annually), it exceeds many European equivalents. For comparison, the UK’s Child Benefit is £25.60 weekly for the first child but universal and not low-income targeted.
• No family size cap: This directly counters the UK’s two-child limit, providing unrestricted support for larger low-income families—a rarity in Europe.
• Broad age coverage: Up to age 16, aligning with school-leaving age, unlike shorter-term benefits in some countries (e.g., up to 12 in parts of Eastern Europe).
• Impact on poverty: Experts, including Oxford University’s Professor Danny Dorling, describe it as causing “the largest fall in child poverty anywhere in Europe for at least 40 years,” potentially since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. nesta.org.uk +4 This has reduced relative child poverty in Scotland to levels below the UK average (23% after housing costs in 2021-24, vs. higher UK rates), with evidence of lower food bank usage and stable poverty amid UK-wide rises. ft.com +1

More with sources at: https://x.com/i/grok?conversation=1993649917370187800