In October 2023, after Professor Dorling’s fulsome praise for the SNP’s Child Payment, BBC Wales had

Prof Danny Dorling, of Oxford University, said the Scottish payment was the most significant attempt to tackle child poverty seen anywhere in Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

“It is clearly the most direct way to help people,” he said.

“The parents of children, and especially their mothers, are the people who have their interests most at heart,” he said.

“So any talk that says that some other method is better is going against all the evidence that we’ve collected for decades.

“You have to hand money directly to the families of those who are poorest. They use it most wisely.”

The Scottish Child Payment cost £428m in the current financial year out of a Scottish budget of nearly £60bn. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-67238317

The ‘The biggest success story in social policy in the UK for 40 years and the biggest fall in child poverty anywhere in Europe for at least 40 years‘ lines do not get a mention but the BBC Wales report is of a quality not seen in Scotland for decades now.

Isn’t it remarkable that BBC Scotland, as confirmed in another TuS post, did not mention any of this. Perhaps not when you remember wnat, all, they are – a propaganda unit.

Dorling has repeatedly highlighted the SCP as a notable exception to broader UK trends of rising child poverty (especially in England) and has criticized some BBC framing of Scottish figures as incomplete or “disingenuous” for not emphasizing the comparative improvement. Independent research (including LSE/York/Glasgow studies) has found statistically significant reductions in material deprivation and food insecurity in Scotland relative to England after the SCP’s introduction. https://www.dannydorling.org/?p=10418