Hundreds of thousands of children in Scotland living in deprivation will be 'cast aside' if Westminster welfare reforms are passed.
The UK government want to change how child poverty is defined, concentrating on parents without a job or education. But according to the Scottish government, 120,000 children acoss the country live below the breadline in a home with at least one working parent. That Is estimated to include around 7,500 Kids in Fife.
UK Government figures, released in June, showed an increase in the number of children living in poverty to 3.71 million after housing costs were taken into account. Of this total 65 per cent of the children were from families where at least one parent was working.
Social Justice Secretary Alex Neil said: said: "By changing the definition of child poverty the UK Government is hiding the true extent of the problem and casting adrift the 120,000 Scottish children whose parents are working on low incomes and struggling to pay their bills.
"The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions must rethink these flawed plans. They will only gloss over the impact of the UK Government’s austerity agenda and fail to show the shocking reality of its inexcusable attack on low-paid families. The Scottish Government will continue to measure and report on the wide range of factors that drive child poverty including income, educational attainment and health outcomes. Our sophisticated measurement framework was developed with experts and leading children’s organisations and is helping us to understand the full scale of the problem and find the most effective ways to address it.
"We recognise that any serious attempt to tackle inequality has to focus on in-work poverty, which remains very high. That’s why we are calling for powers over the minimum wage, employment policy and working-age benefits to be devolved to Scotland."
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