2. To ask the Scottish Government how children in low-income households in the Cowdenbeath Constituency are being supported by the social security system. (S5O-04542)

Since their launch, best start grant and best start foods have provided over £2.2 million in vital support to eligible Fife households with children.

The Scottish child payment will open for applications from low-income families with children under the age of 6 in November this year, and that significant new benefit will start to provide payments of £10 per week for each eligible child from the end of February 2021.

The new job start payment, which helps young people to take up offers of work, provides a higher level of support—£400—to those who have children.

I thank the Cabinet secretary for her answer and am particularly pleased to note that, notwithstanding the challenges of the pandemic, the Scottish Government will be in a position to commence payments of the Scottish child payment early next year.

What does the Scottish Government plan to do to encourage people to apply—in particular, for the Scottish child payment, which is a new game-changing benefit that will do so much to tackle child poverty in my Cowdenbeath Constituency and throughout Scotland?

Annabelle Ewing is right to point out the importance not only of establishing the Scottish child payment, but of ensuring that take-up of that benefit is as high as possible. That is why, as with all the benefits that we have launched, we are developing a comprehensive communications and marketing campaign that will support the launch of the application process. There will be further work on that during the application window, and when payments begin to be made at the end of February.

Our approach will build on the lessons that we have learned from the best start foods and best start grant payments, and from our wider activity on benefit take-up. We will keep that under review to ensure that we are doing everything that we can to make families across Scotland aware of the benefit. That includes families in Fife and in Ms Ewing’s Constituency.

Article 27 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child sets out that every child has the right to a standard of living that is good enough to meet their physical and social needs and to support their development. It also says that Governments must help families who cannot afford to provide that.

For months, anti-poverty and children’s organisations and many others have been calling on the Scottish Government to implement a payment that would be equivalent to the Scottish child payment, and which would tide families over until that benefit is available in February. Will the Scottish Government now turn its rhetoric into reality and make that payment to the families that need it?

We will be making the Scottish child payment only two months later than was originally planned. That two-months change is due to the difficulty of having a benefit go live during the Covid pandemic.

That does not mean that we are not serious about our responsibility to ensure that we support low-income families. For example, £110 million has been spent to tackle food insecurity during the pandemic, and we have more than doubled the resource for the Scottish welfare fund. There is £80 million available for discretionary housing payments, a £10 million tenant hardship loan fund and the coronavirus carers allowance supplement. I could go on, but I hope that that gives a flavour of the real action that the Government has taken.

I hope that Ms Grant will join us in seeking more powers for the Scottish Parliament, to ensure that we have the responsibility for low-income benefits here in whole, rather than their being reserved to Westminster. We would then no longer be wanting changes that the Westminster Government refuses to make, such as the changes that are required to get rid of the benefit cap, which has seen many more families being plunged into poverty during the coronavirus pandemic.