Scotland's struggle to tackle poverty while cutting services

Less than four miles from the Scottish Parliament, workers at a community centre in Edinburgh are handing out free bread to help the residents of Muirhouse make ends meet.

That is the reality facing a Scottish government which says its central aim is eradicating child poverty, a task arguably made harder by the spending cuts it announced this week.

First Minister John Swinney set out his programme for government for 2024/25 just 24 hours after his finance secretary Shona Robison wielded the axe on many of that government's programmes.

Her statement marked the third year in a row of emergency cuts to public spending being announced - not for the future but during the year, meaning her axe falling on programmes already in swing.

Labour blame SNP incompetence, saying Mr Swinney's administration made £800m of public sector pay offers without knowing where it would find the money.

That figure may yet rise after the Unison trade union rejected a pay offer for bin collectors and some education staff.

The independent Scottish Fiscal Commission agrees that much of the budgetary pressure is a result of the Scottish government's own decisions, including freezing council tax and raising public sector pay.

State funding of university tuition, personal care for the elderly, and NHS prescriptions also remain expensive policy choices.

Finance Secretary Shona Robison at Holyrood

SNP ministers defend such universal benefits as forming a "social contract" with citizens, which they say improve the nation's wellbeing and productivity in the long-term.

They also insist they were right to prioritise the funding of a new welfare benefit, known as the Scottish Child Payment, pointing out that its impact has been praised by campaigners against child poverty.

The Conservatives accuse the SNP of stifling growth and investment by imposing higher taxes than elsewhere in the UK on annual incomes above £28,867.

The Scottish government says the root problem facing Scotland is that the UK as a whole is plagued by entrenched poverty and low growth, exacerbated by its departure from the European Union.

Michael McNamara's son has additional support needs and attends a state school in Glasgow

Mr Swinney's pledge to eradicate child poverty is also affected by cuts at local authority level, where budgets have been under severe pressure for years, in part because of his administration's insistence on blocking increases in council tax.

Glasgow City Council, for example, has already cut 172 teaching staff as part of a plan to close 450 posts over three years, provoking a storm of protest.

One parents' group has begun legal action, saying the cuts will have a "profoundly negative impact" on children.

"I personally believe we're in a crisis situation for all services," says Michael McNamara, whose son has additional support needs and attends a state school in the Knightswood area of Glasgow.

He says the school has, on occasion, not been able to provide his child with the necessary support because of staffing pressures – and fears the situation will worsen as the cuts bite.

Glasgow City Council says it is doing all it can to minimise any impact on schools, but that it has to "look at every option" to make £108m of savings over the next three years.

The Scottish government has also been accused of failing to provide enough support for rehabilitation programmes to tackle another priority related to Mr Swinney's poverty targets – reducing the number of people dying from drug misuse.

Three years after his predecessor Nicola Sturgeon admitted her government "took our eye off the ball" on the issue, official figures recorded 1,172 deaths in 2023.

Another challenge for the Scottish government as it weighs up where to allocate resources – perhaps the greatest challenge of all – is the state of the NHS.

In his programme for government speech, Mr Swinney referred to "terrific successes in our National Health Service including the best-performing core A&E departments anywhere in the United Kingdom."

That is far from the full picture.

When Mr Swinney took over from Humza Yousaf in May, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) pointed out that the number of people waiting 12 hours or more in Scottish A&Es had grown by 6260% since 2017.

In February, a report by the public spending watchdog, Audit Scotland, said that soaring costs, long waits for treatment, and staff shortages were having "a direct impact on patient safety".

The RCEM says that means patients are dying who, with better and more prompt care, would live. Others leave hospital sicker than they might have been, which campaigners say can also entrench poverty.

According to the latest official figures, more than one in ten people in Scotland – 580,000 people – were living in severe poverty in 2022/23, a figure which includes 130,000 children.

Nonetheless, Ms Robison is cutting £6.7m from the education and skills budget this year and £115.8m from health and social care, including an £18.8m reduction in mental health services.

The battle over who is to blame for the state of the public finances and public services is likely to run all the way through to the Scottish parliamentary elections in 2026.

Labour hopes to follow its success in July's general election – when it jumped from one Scottish MP to 37, while the SNP slumped from 48 to nine – and win control of the devolved Scottish government.

Its campaign is likely to focus on the notion that only Labour can deliver change after what it describes as years of failure by the SNP, echoing its successful attack on the Conservatives at a UK level.

Mr Swinney has already made it plain that the SNP’s counter-attack will revolve around the idea that, far from delivering meaningful change at the UK-level, Labour is actually continuing with damaging austerity.

Pauline Bowie is deeply frustrated by the political blame game

Back at the community project in Muirhouse, Pauline Bowie of Low Income Families Together (LIFT), is deeply frustrated by the political blame game.

She argues that responsibility for the current state of the nation should be shared between the UK government, the Scottish government and local authorities.

As it is, she says, families in some of the poorest parts of the country are facing the toughest financial situation in decades.

Most people who come to use the service are not unemployed but in work says Ms Bowie, a point echoed by Cheryl May, who is here to attend a mindfulness class.

“They’ve got full time jobs and yet they’re still having to come here,” she says.

“It’s cruel and it’s horrible and it’s sad.”

“Between the pandemic, cost of living increase, and now all the cuts that the government is making again, it's awful,” adds Ms Bowie.

“It's the worst I've ever seen it in the whole 25, 30 years I've been in this business.”

“Basic human rights are not being met. People cannot pay their electricity and the winter months are coming up."

And, she says: “I dread to think what we're going to see this year.”