Thanks once more to Dottie for alerting me to this.
In the Guardian yesterday:
The emergence of “welfare nationalism” in the UK has created striking differences in benefit entitlement that result in a Scottish family on a low income receiving £15,000 a year more in state support than an identical household over the border in England.
A typical out of work couple with four children would have received £22,000 a year benefit income in York, compared with £32,000 in Belfast and £37,000 in Glasgow, according to new research on the impact of devolved welfare approaches
Other eye-catching divergences include benefit and grant entitlements that mean a baby in a family on universal credit in Scotland qualifies its parents for an additional £1,800 during its the first year of life, compared with England or Wales.
More detail at: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/may/31/striking-differences-benefit-entitlements-uk-countries-research
Based on the latest UK-wide YouGov poll, 16% of the better off and 27% of those in the middle but a whopping 35% support Reform UK, driven by fear of immigration. Government support may have little impact on the sense of that for the less well off, but in Scotland the message is all-too-clear.
Worryingly, many are not getting this message. In the most recent Ipsos poll for Scotland, a shocking 26% of the least well-off support Reform UK who are committed to making their lives worse and only 34% support the SNP who are committed to helping them, as the above Guardian article makes clear.
If you struggle, do not make things worse by voting Reform UK who promise to cut immigration but also openly promise to cut benefits, to remove wage protection and other emplyment rights.
Why is this good for all of us?
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.
*Between 150,000–200,000+ families (accounting for average family sizes and eligibility on low-income UC) benefit from this.9
Sources:
- 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.
- https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/explore-mental-health/statistics/poverty-statistics
- https://www.rcpch.ac.uk/resources/child-health-inequalities-position-statement
- 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
- 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
- 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.
- https://www.gov.uk/government/news/smcpc-research-on-attainment-of-disadvantaged-children#:~:text=Disadvantaged%20children%20who%20start%20out,of%20the%20least%20deprived%20children.
- https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667%2822%2900065-2/fulltext
- https://www.gov.scot/news/more-than-300-000-children-supported-by-scottish-child-payment/
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Talking-up Scotland 
This must be the ‘something for nothing society’ in Scotland which Johan Lamont fulminated about.
She is a person, like I, born in Anderston of working class parents who spoke Gaelic. Anderston had dreadful housing in places with a lot of poverty up through the 1970s. Ms Lamont would have seen that and the impact it had on people. During the 1950s and 60s there was what was called ‘full employment’ and Anderston, at the time, as well as having docks was highly industrialised. Most people in the area worked and yet poverty was high. Most families like mine lived from payday to payday and had no savings.
Yet the media still propagated the lie of ‘workshop scroungers with large numbers of children living on benefits and calling the rest of us mugs’.
A fair proportion of the men in the area had served in the Second World War and were suffering from visible wounds but also, with the benefit of hindsight, suffering from post traumatic shock. Others had injuries and illnesses sustained at work in days when there was no Health and Safety at Work Act.
We must remember that the current levels of benefits were won in difficult struggles against hard faced Tory governments and their nasty media. We must also remember that because wages are so low and working conditions poor that families in receipt of benefits are families where both adults are in work.
As well as providing income work also plays a social and emotional role in people’s lives. So, it is better, on the whole, for people to be on work than not. Creating more jobs, through Keynesian economic principles, enables more people to enter work, earn wages and reduce their dependence on benefits. That is what the current Labour Government should be doing. It has done some things, such as the Employment Act, which move things in the right direction, but it has no coherent plan and no narrative.
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