Lord Jim Wallace, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, has joined more than 120 organisations across Scotland in a letter calling for the First Minister to double the Scottish Child Payment in this year’s budget.
Child poverty is rising in every local authority in Scotland, with one in four children in Scotland growing up in poverty even prior to the pandemic. A coalition of over 120 anti-poverty organisations, children’s charities, community groups, think tanks, trade unions, faith leaders and academics have joined the call, outlining in their letter to the First Minister that doubling the payment would ‘signal that ending child poverty will be a defining priority for this Scottish Government and Scottish Parliament’.