Politics aside, the facts are stark. All of these parties committed Holyrood to targets on child poverty. This included an interim target, now only three years away, of a reduction to 18 percent. But statistics now show that poverty was increasing, even before the pandemic, to roughly one in four.
Poverty
With 4 in 10 children in single parent families living in poverty, the Scottish government has a way to go to meet its child poverty targets.
Child Poverty Targets “Destined for Failure” Without More Employability Support for Carers.
The Food Foundation has released a report of the impact a year of crisis has had on food security. 4.7 million adults have been affected by food insecurity over the last 6 months.
Food Banks Are Not The Solution: Food Security Needs to Be Focus of Recovery Plan
If you lose your job during the pandemic, that’s not your fault, right? Sadly, and absurdly, that isn’t the majority view in Britain today.
Source Direct: Winners and Losers, Strivers and Skivers
So far, a mere ten countries account for an astonishing 75 percent of global vaccinations. 130 countries have received not yet received a single dose. “Vaccine equality,” the UN observes, “is the biggest moral test before the global community”.
Source Direct: Covid’s Global Scars
Coronavirus, many imagine, is the great equaliser. However, new figures from Oxfam paint a very different picture.
Source Direct: Plunder and Pandemic
Statistics today from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) further expose the scale of poverty in the UK. They show that, despite interventions such as the furlough scheme, lockdowns are helping push many families “to the brink”.
Source Direct: Hard Times
“Food – good food – is not a luxury, and there is nothing you can do, no one you can be, that justifies being deprived of it. The matter must be put beyond question.”
Sean Bell: Food is everything
In new YouGov research for Citizens Advice Scotland, polling showed that 46% of Scots run out of money before payday since Covid-19 restrictions began.
Almost half of Scots run out of money by payday.
When we talk about regional inequality, we usually talk about the chasm between London & the South-East and the rest of the UK, including Scotland. On that scale, Britain is one of the most regionally unequal country’s in Europe. But regional inequalities matter within Scotland too, have been growing for a long time, and are being […]