Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan: Progress Report 2025-26

Ministerial Foreword – Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice and Housing

Eradicating child poverty is the defining mission of this Government. We are clear that too many children continue to live in poverty and that is why we must do all we can to drive change and improve outcomes. As the final progress report against ‘Best Start, Bright Futures’, the Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan for 2022-26, this provides an opportunity not only to reflect on the action and progress delivered to date, but also to reaffirm our commitment to ending child poverty in Scotland.

Our focus on delivery means that despite the challenges posed by years of UK Government austerity, Brexit, the COVID pandemic, and both Russia’s illegal full-scale invasion of Ukraine and conflict in the Middle East, which has fuelled significant increases to the cost of living, we have made real progress over the last four years.

In the past year we have worked to deliver new and ambitious action for families, including supporting up to 20,000 children through our Bright Start Breakfasts fund, scrapping ScotRail peak fares for good, and establishing a bus cap fare pilot – laying the foundations to go even further. This is in addition to providing £10 million in emergency support for families through the reinvestment of two-child limit mitigation funding.

As a result, this report details nearly 100 actions which have been completed or are delivering at scale since 2022. This includes more than doubling the value of the Scottish Child Payment and expanding the payment to all eligible children under the age of 16, establishing and expanding our Fairer Futures Partnerships to support more areas to deliver integrated and responsive services, as well as continuing to support families to enter and access employment through our ongoing focus on employability support and provision of high quality funded early learning and childcare.

These are actions which are supporting families every day, with our Scottish Child Payment alone estimated to keep around 50,000 children out of relative poverty this year. They are also backed by significant investment, with over £3.1 billion in support targeted at low income households in 2025-26 and spend benefiting children rising to almost £1.5 billion. Compared to 2018-19, this means that investment benefitting children has risen by more than £960 million.

But we know we must continue to go further. ‘Bringing Hope, Building Futures’, our third Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan for 2026-31, published in March, provides a robust framework and clear action to drive continued progress. This includes investing £40 million in 2026-27 to deliver new support with transport and skills for families, increasing our Scottish Child Payment to £40 for families with a child under one during 2027-28, and investing £100 million over three years to deliver a national breakfast club offer for primary school aged children with provision in all primary and special schools by August 2027. It also backed by significant investment in the delivery of affordable homes, as well as sustained investment in policies fundamental to our approach, such as funded early learning and childcare, and free bus travel for under 22s.

With action in the plan estimated to keep 100,000 children out of relative poverty this year, we have now set out how we will go even further through the manifesto commitments on which this government was elected and the priorities we have set out for our first 100 days. These commitments, which are in addition to those set out in the Delivery Plan, include taking forward plans to ensure essential food in our supermarkets is affordable, expanding support for childcare to all children from nine-months to the end of primary school, and introducing a £2 nationwide cap on bus fares to lower the cost of people’s commute.

Our action stands in contrast the UK Government, whose long-awaited Child Poverty Strategy represents a missed opportunity to deliver the change needed for families. That is why we will continue to push for UK Ministers to work in close partnership with us and to match our ambition and investment by scrapping the benefit cap and matching the Scottish Child Payment, steps which could help lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty across the UK.

We are clear that eradicating child poverty is extremely challenging, however we are ready for that challenge and committed to redoubling our efforts to deliver the fairer future that every child in Scotland deserves.

Shirley-Anne Somerville

Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice and Housing