 I encourage members who are leaving the chamber to do so as quickly and quietly as possible. The final item of business this evening is a member's business debate on motion 10526, in the name of Collette Stevenson, on challenge poverty week 2023. The debate will be concluded without any questions being put, but I invite members who wish to participate to press the request-to-speak buttons now or as soon as possible, and I invite Collette Stevenson to open the debate around seven minutes, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I am grateful to members across the chamber for supporting my motion. There are many things that I want to touch upon in my speech, and I accept the challenge of doing it in seven minutes. First, I want to pay tribute to the Poverty Alliance, who play an important role in Scotland's anti-poverty network, alongside many other organisations, community groups and activists. With the current cost-of-living crisis, we are all acutely aware of the increased difficulties faced by people right across the country. Challenge poverty week 2023 gave us the opportunity to acknowledge this and also to recognise that, for many, this crisis is compounding their hardship. The realities of poverty were highlighted and solutions were put forward. This year's calls include ensuring that people have adequate incomes and that no one goes hungry. Around 250,000 children are living in poverty in Scotland. I know that everyone here is united in supporting the Scottish Government's national mission to tackle child poverty. Under the Child Poverty Act 2017, Scotland is the only part of the UK with statutory income targets on tackling child poverty, with bold targets for 2030 and interim targets to be met this financial year. As convener of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee, I want us to review the Child Poverty Act when data for this year are available and ensure that we learn the right lessons to meet those 2030 targets. Much has changed since 2017, with Brexit, Covid and List Trust's economic vandalism all adding to the pain felt by people across the UK. Those crises might affect the targets, but the Scottish Government has worked hard to support people through them, with a wide-ranging package of measures to build a fairer Scotland. A crucial part of this is the Scottish child payment, something charities have held as a game changer. That payment of £25 per eligible child per week is a lifeline for so many families and it will help more than 300,000 children this year. In addition, the SNP and government is widening access to free school meals, boosting social security spending by £1 billion, expanding free childcare and continuing to mitigate the worst of Westminster's policies. Actions such as those are expected to lift 90,000 children out of poverty this year alone. However, with one hand tied behind its back, there is only so much this Parliament can do. Imagine the fairer country that we could build if this Parliament had the full economic and fiscal powers required to tackle poverty and inequalities. Instead, we are left with Westminster austerity and toxic Tory policies such as the rape clause, which only hamper our efforts to tackle poverty. Sadly, the Labour Party is offering nothing other than a continuation of those cruel policies. The First Minister's three key missions are tackling poverty, building a fair green and growing economy and delivering effective public services. Those three areas are interlinked. As Alfie Stirling from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation recently said, business investment might be the lifeblood of a growing economy, but social security and public services provide the heartbeat. Social security is an important way of supporting people when they need it and equally in the fight against poverty. I am glad that, with recent but limited powers, we have built a new Scottish social security system based on fairness, dignity and respect. However, while social security has a role to play here, it is by no means the only tool. Regardless of social security status, those who are in work are not immune from the risk of poverty. Indeed, the poverty alliance pointed out the stark statistics that over 10 per cent of workers in Scotland are locked in persistent low pay and nearly three quarters of Louise workers are women. Last week, I spoke at an event celebrating SSE's 10th anniversary as a living wage employer. We had a really interesting discussion about the benefits, not only in terms of social justice, but also to the business of paying staff a fair wage for a fair day's work. Unfortunately, with employment law reserved to Westminster, we are relying on employers choosing to adopt it. I am glad that so many organisations are doing so, and East Kilbride is home to over 60 living wage employers. This year, the living wage is £48 per hour higher than the minimum wage for those aged over 22. For someone in that age bracket, working a 37-hour week, that translates to an extra £923 over the year. However, one of the unfair parts of the UK minimum wage policy is that it includes age inequality by default. For someone aged 21 or 22, that loss rises to nearly £1400 if they are on the minimum rather than the living wage. While, for someone aged 18 to 20, it rises to a staggering £6500. This morning, the new living wage rate was announced at £12 per hour—£1 more than the minimum wage—so that inequity will only get worse. I want to mention this. Poverty at the end of life is another issue that we must challenge. The Marie Curie Foundation found that two-thirds of people with a terminal illness rely on benefits, so it is vital that we ensure sufficient support for people in this situation and indeed their carers. In conclusion, I pay tribute to all of Scotland's anti-poverty campaigners. I commend the poverty alliance for another successful challenge poverty week initiative that was launched 10 years ago. I will certainly continue to challenge poverty and work for a fairer Scotland, and I look forward to hearing contributions from all my colleagues. I call Clare Adamson to be followed by Miles Briggs up to four minutes. I begin by giving my apologies to the chamber, as I have to leave the debate early this evening. I congratulate Clare Adamson for bringing this really important debate to the chamber this evening. After all, as legislators and representatives of the people who elected us, challenging poverty should be our collective moral imperative. I could have talked about many things this evening, such as the two-child cap, which remains an important UK policy that continues to put people driving children into poverty. According to the Child's Poverty Action Group in Scotland, 15,000 children a year have been pushed into poverty by this policy. I could also talk about the alarming new study from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published today, which shows around 3.8 million people experienced destitution in the UK up to 61 per cent since 2019 and more than doubling since 2017. Destitution is increasingly more slowly in Scotland thanks to the bold policies that we have, such as the Scottish child payment. We remain limited in what we can do in this chamber without all the powers of an independent country. However, I am confident that my colleagues will cover some of those areas this evening. I want to raise tonight and focus on an extant injustice that has been raised by a number of my constituents and that of historical energy debt. I do not mean their historical energy debt, I mean debt that comes with a pre-payment meter. We have had a number of people who have taken up tenancies, and that can be in social housing, council houses or new properties. If you do not get a new top-up card on a pre-paid meter, you could carry the debt of the previous tenant, the previous owner and the standing charges from when that was last used. Even if you supply with meter readings, the standing charge debt can be accrued and put on to your system. That is leaving some of the most vulnerable people in my constituency absolutely devastated because they cannot heat and they cannot look after their own issues and their own budgets because they are being lumped up to the highest one so far, £271 of someone else's debt. That is morally repugnant. Although we could say that that is a Westminster issue and that it needs legislation, what are the energy companies doing to right this wrong? It is an absolute escape. That is just one of the problems with pre-paid meetings that we know by. Because quite often you can have an increased tariff, a more expensive tariff, you are also in the position where if someone is struggling and tries to manage their own energy use, they can fall victim to what is self-disconnection, why are we talking in this century in Scotland with all the weather problems that we have? Self-disconnection, it makes no sense whatsoever and it is a term that I cannot understand why it is still being used in this country for people. Perhaps the biggest one, I got the £400 grant, everyone in this room probably got the £400 grant from the UK Government to help with energy costs, but the take-up for pre-paid metres is minuscule, in some cases about 60 per cent. People are not accessing the vouchers and that is to do with it being assumed that they would have a mobile phone, it can be sent to assumed that we would have digital access. Why should the most vulnerable people in our society have to be jumping through hoops to get a benefit that we are all getting in this room? There is so much more that the energy companies could be doing to help people on pre-payment metres to write that injustice and it is absolutely moral imperative on them to fix this problem as quickly as possible. I would like to thank Clete Stevenson as well for securing this debate this evening. Challenge poverty week was launched in 2013 by the poverty alliance with the aim of highlighting the injustice of poverty in Scotland and with the desire to find solutions based on compassion and collective action. I congratulate all those who have helped to organise and took part in this year's challenge poverty week with more than 400 events taking place between 2 and 8 October. Challenge poverty week is important. It is important that we recognise that the poverty allowance has been pushing Parliament on the issues. I believe that its strong advocacy has helped to make both Government and Parliament act in many areas. That is why we see the continued strong cross-party consensus set out in the objectives of the 2017 Child Poverty Scotland Act and Bill, which was passed unanimously by Parliament, setting a target to substantially reduce rates of child poverty in Scotland and why we must collectively continue to focus on delivering the outcomes within that bill. In the time that I have today, I wanted to concentrate on three key sections of our society that I think we need to see more focused and targeted support delivered for. Levels of poverty among Scotland's ethnic minority communities remains disproportionately higher than the general population. It is estimated that rates of poverty stand at 48 per cent amongst mixed black and other ethnic groups and 49 per cent for Asian ethnic groups in our society. Clearly, there are specific factors that are negatively impacting on minority ethnic groups experiencing higher levels of poverty. We need to see more focused action on what are the barriers that continue to exist for those groups, furthest removed from accessing welfare and support. In the committee, we have heard previously that language barriers continue to often be one of those key factors. Loan parent families are of which, overwhelmingly, single women, 92 per cent, with a single source of income, also have higher poverty levels, with almost 40 per cent of children in relative poverty in Scotland living in a lone parent family. It stands to reason that we need to look specifically at what targeted support can therefore be provided to them. I hope that when we are considering future increases and future targeted support within the child payment that we will consider as a Parliament and the Government will consider how those groups could be specifically looked at targeted support. That is their ask to committee in many previous sessions an opportunity for us to look at that. Collette Stevenson touched upon unpaid carers. I think that that is one group of people. I certainly hope that we can see more targeted support when we are looking in the future. I welcome the fact that the Scottish Government has listened to some of the concerns that I and others have outlined when someone who is undertaking a caring role, once that person dies, the fact that the guillotine for payments happens has impacted on many people. I welcome the fact that the Government has made a commitment to extend the carer support payment for the six months after a person who they are caring for has died. There is lots more. I hope that we can also have a conversation around additional support that people need, potentially to get them back into the workplace but also back into society. To conclude, Presiding Officer, I welcome challenge poverty week 2023. Above all, I hope that this year once again presents the opportunity for us all to rededicate ourselves to deliver in the policy outcomes that we are all committed to and to continue as a Parliament and Government to lift people out of poverty. I am not alone when I say that I did not get into politics to make things worse. I get into politics to try to make things better for people. Challenging poverty at every opportunity is something that I believe that we should all be doing. During last year's challenge poverty week, I organised two cost-of-living surgeries to raise awareness of the support and advice that are freely available to people worried about rising bills. Since then, I have organised another seven surgeries and have another lined up for next month. It is an MSP that has always strived to be accessible as possible to my constituents and having those surgeries outwith my office and in the local town centres was key to their success. There was an existing football and milk wall shopping centre in Greenock, but also when I had one in the Inverclyde Community Development Trust offices in Port Glasgow, so people stopped to engage with the advice agencies in attendance. That included advice to direct Scotland and home manager Scotland, amongst other local partners. Social Security Scotland is now also one of the key agencies that invite along to the cost-of-living surgeries, which have become a regular feature of my parliamentary duties. This is because I want to ensure that my constituents are receiving all of the assistance that they are entitled to to try to help to reduce the issue of poverty in the constituency. If we take the Scottish child payment as one example of a benefit that is unique to Scotland and worth £25 per week per eligible child, this is benefiting 316,000 children as of the 30th of June this year, and it is estimated to have lifted 50,000 children out of relative poverty. That shows that this SNP Government is committed to using the powers at its disposal to try to tackle poverty in Scotland and demonstrates that Scotland can take a different approach to welfare reform. I also think about how much further we can go with more powers at the very least or with independence in this Parliament. The reality is that the UK Government has presided over a cost-of-living crisis that is hitting our economy harder than our European neighbours. Research shows time and time again that Brexit is one of the driving factors behind this, a policy that is now sadly supported also by the Labour Party. The UK Government's continued pursuit of austerity started by Labour when they were lost in power, but now certainly the full steam ahead with the Tories is making people's lives harder, not easier. The waiting time for universal credit is still far too long and continues to drive people to food banks. When people do eventually save the universal credit payment, it does not cover all of the basics. I regularly visit the number of Clyde food bank and I support the Truswell Trust's guaranteed essentials campaign, which is calling for the basic rate of universal credit to cover at least the cost of essentials, such as food, household bills and travel costs. That is because around 90 per cent of low-income households receiving universal credit are going without at least one essential, such as food, a warm home or toiletries. That shows that the UK Government policies are contributing to poverty, which is in stark contrast to the efforts of this Parliament and the Government here in Scotland. We are attempting to tackle poverty in Scotland with one hand tied behind our backs and, sadly, with Labour now, it is also signed up to the two child cap, which is working against efforts to lift children out of poverty. It is abundantly clear that we cannot trust the Westminster parties with looking after those most in need. They are up to challenge poverty week. I was asked by the poverty lines to write a blog post about my work challenging poverty and it gave some background about the cost of living surgeries that I mentioned earlier, but one key point that I stressed in the blog, something that I want to stress again to everyone who is listening today, is that if you need help, please ask MSPs and their staff across the country to deal with difficult situations daily. Certainly, it is that there are folk there who can help. I am conscious of my time. Thank you very much. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I thank Collette Stevenson for bringing this debate to Parliament. Can I pay tribute as well to the Poverty Alliance and all of those organisations who are leading in the fight against poverty? Because poverty is not simply a lack of wealth, it is a lack of power as well, which can lead to acquiescence, and that is why we must all challenge poverty at every opportunity. Do not we have a responsibility? Do not we owe a debt to the elderly who built this society but who now find themselves living in fear and in deprivation? Do not we have an obligation to all of those children being brought up in abject poverty to take action? Do not that duty extend to the 80,000 children in Scotland who are punished by the two-child cap? The two-child cap is an immoral, a cowardly assault by the Tory Government on defenceless people, on children in the deepest poverty. It is built on the grotesque fiction that there is a deserving and an undeserving poor, that a woman will undergo nine months of pregnancy that a family will invest 18 years raising a child simply so that they can pick up more welfare payments for an extra £15 a week. It is nothing short of obscene. So to the Scottish Government, my message is this. We cannot set legally binding targets in this Parliament to eliminate child poverty and then break our own laws with impunity. But to my own party, I also have a simple message. If not us who, if not now when, this is no time for a truce with poverty, especially child poverty, we must overcome those irresponsible voices who talk of economy or worse those who speak of the money markets. We must understand that people are the assets on our balance sheet. Throughout most of my adult life, there has always been a debate about a cap on social security spending. Why is there never a debate about a cap on military security spending? There's always a debate about what we can afford to give to the very poorest in our society, but there's never a debate about how much we subsidise the very richest in our society. We are told time and time again that welfare spending is wasteful, but what is really wasteful is writing these kids off. Tackling child poverty is an investment, but more it speaks to our common humanity, to the value of human dignity and of social justice. We know that two out of three of those children in Scotland living in poverty are in families where at least one adult is in work. They've got a job, but they are low paid and insecure jobs. We receive reports about thousands of children in Scotland in this day and age, admitted to hospital for malnutrition, and the number is rising. Last year it doubled, but there is no shortage of food. It's just that there are serious problems with its distribution. We know where this leads. Children who are suffering today from malnutrition will almost certainly face health problems throughout their lives, their life expectancy shortened. We do not need simply peace meal reform, we need a fundamental transformation in the established relations of power. Let me conclude with the words of John Smith, who, on his election as leader of the Labour Party, said this. He said, it's not just people who live in poverty who gain from our commitment to social justice and fairness. We all live in the same society. It is a poorer society if it is diminished by unemployment, homelessness and poverty. His words call out to us down the ages. They require to be heeded and they demand to be acted upon. I'm grateful to my colleague Collette Steven for bringing the debate to the chamber. I was elected to this place just two and a half years ago and have engaged in many debates about poverty, but I'm struggling, Presiding Officer. I'm struggling because time and time again we come here to discuss poverty, the effects of poverty and the impact it has on health, wellbeing and educational attainment. I could go on. Time and time again, the Scottish Government implements mechanisms to help alleviate that poverty in targeted areas, such as the child payment, which is praised by many as a game changer. Yet, time and time again, those efforts are undermined by a UK Government that has been hell bent on reducing welfare and access to welfare for more than 13 years. A person in need of support in Scotland, simultaneously, has one hand giving it, while another one, from 400 miles down the road, is snatching it away. Reflecting on 24 years of the still young Parliament, this place has flexed its ambition for our country with the creation of a Social Security Scotland. Now, it's not a silver bullet, no organisation is, but a clear intent to treat those who need support with dignity and respect that they deserve. Contrast this with the Department for Work and Pensions, who, over the past decade and a bit, has contracted private companies to assess benefit claimants to make sure that they are not scamming the system. People with lifelong degenerative disabilities are still required to present to assessors frequently or face being sanctioned losing the support that they need to simply get by. Presiding Officer, even with the welfare benefits, getting by is a struggle. The benefit cap set up by the Tories roughly 14,750 per year for a single adult living outside London. For contrast, the real living wage is the calculated minimum income a person needs to afford life's basics. The new rate announced today of £12 an hour works out at a take-home pay of around £18,900 per year after income national insurance. We cannot have a Tory welfare system that is difficult to navigate in the hope that people just give up with inadequate payments. They haven't even assured that work pays either. George Osborne introduced the national living wage as the legal minimum amount a worker can be paid. It was nothing but a con—a rebranded minimum wage. Outside London, it is more than £1.50 per hour less than the real living wage. It works out around 2,730 per year less for a full-time worker at 35 hours per week. Is it any wonder that people in the UK who are using the truseltos food banks have increased from around 26,000 in 2010 when the Tories came into power to now almost £3 million in 2023? It's time for a different kind of politics. Sadly, we have no indication that that is going to come either from Keir Stammer's Labour Party, who won't even reverse the two child benefit cap and rape clause losing families over £3,000 per year. Although many welfare streams remain under Westminster control, I urge all parties to look to Scotland and the ethos of our devolved social security system. People need and deserve dignity and respect. Work should pay, no more contracts, a living wage should be exactly that. During Challenge Poverty Week, I encourage colleagues to engage with the events so that we are reminded of how important it is to alleviate and eradicate poverty. I thank Collette Stevenson, too, for bringing this important debate to the chamber this afternoon. As deputy convener of the cross-party group on poverty, I welcome the opportunity to support Challenge Poverty Week and to raise awareness of the issue of poverty and the interlinked impact that poverty can have on all aspects of people's lives. Poverty has many roots as the motion outlines. There are links between discrimination of all kinds and poverty. As a society, we must challenge poverty and discrimination. We must break any stigma about poverty to ensure that those who need assistance are supported and that includes receiving any financial assistance that people are entitled to. We should move away from the idea that poverty is solely the cause of individual choices. We all have a responsibility in society to help tackle poverty, not least to our children. The figures of 250,000 in child poverty in Scotland today should shame us all. We know that, when you are born into poverty, you are more likely to die in poverty. For rural and island Scotland, it can be the challenges of geography that impact poverty. Before the UK Government's energy payment support scheme announcement last year, covering part of the cost of energy bills, Shetland Islands Council predicted that 96 per cent of households in the isles would find themselves in fuel poverty. That meant that only islanders earning £104,000 would not be classed as being in fuel poverty. We know that families and households across Scotland are being pushed to the very limits of their finances. Since the start of the cost of living crisis, constituents have been in contact with me concerned about their energy bills and their inability to pay them. I recognise the points that Claire Adamson was making about prepayment metres. In the 21st century, as with any utility and necessity, the cost of energy should not be a cause of or exacerbate poverty. Shetland's location in the windiest part of the UK and most northerly island group means that we often keep heating on for longer throughout the year and islanders recognise the irony of living in and around such an energy-rich environment. Fuel poverty levels remain stubbornly high in island and rural areas. A few weeks ago, I questioned the Scottish Government about its plans for this winter. The UK Government's intervention on energy costs last year showed that there can be policy solutions and policies that may not be directly aimed at reducing poverty can have that added outcome. A programme of Scottish Government support for home installation would be one way to improve energy efficiency, thereby reducing household energy costs and helping to tackle fuel poverty. Transport in rural areas is another example of geographic impact on poverty levels. Lack of sufficient public transport can be a blockage to accessing health services being but one example. Transport challenges also affect employment opportunities, including childcare, shift work and securing jobs further afield from home. As the motion suggests, this all has a disproportionate impact on certain sectors of society. I have kept my speech very focused today on the impact of geography on poverty, but island, rural, urban and inner city areas all have their own stories when it comes to poverty and it is one small fragment of the bigger picture. We must identify and dismantle the stigma surrounding poverty. We can dream of a world without poverty, a world where Government policies support those who need it, a world without demonisation of those being supported by benefits, a world where no newborn is no more likely to be born into poverty than any other. The liberal reforms early in the last century began the model for state policies to intervene to mitigate poverty. The Scottish Government's competence over social benefits is an opportunity in the early years of this century to tackle our ever-evolving understanding of poverty. I now call Stephanie Callaghan to be followed by Marie McNair up to four minutes, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I thank Collette Stevenson for securing this important debate, and I too congratulate the Poverty Alliance for their tireless and passionate campaign to attain poverty. What poverty does is it robs people of choices, and the chance to lead fulfilling dignified lives basically strips the joy right out of our lives. Sadly, over a million Scots are grappling with poverty, and almost half of those people are living in deep poverty. For others who could never have imagined struggling with poverty just a few short years ago, they now find themselves having to make unimaginable choices between eating, heating and keeping clean. No one should have to compromise their dignity, and a country is affluent and resource-rich as ours. The inequality that prevails across the UK is nothing short of scandalous, as we have already heard. This year, the experiencing rising costs across Scotland report by the Scottish Women's Budget Group highlights that women are often the shock absorbers of poverty in their households, with women commonly cutting back on life's essentials to better provide for their children. A fifth of women's surveyed were skipping meals, and just under half were not replacing clothes and shoes. One woman said, "...the changes I have made personally does not apply to the children. They do not go without healthy meals, sugars.", yet, despite those selfless acts, women cannot break the relentless cycle of poverty, and the associated mental stresses often have far-reaching consequences. Poverty rates are higher among lone parents too, and 92 per cent of those parents are women. When you have a single source of income, limited job flexibility, childcare costs, and you are confronted with Westminster's cruel two-child benefit policy, within a universal credit system that is described as an insufficient means to livelihood, the pressures of being the sole provider are often crippling and isolating. That holds particularly true for mums and parents under 25 years old, as Collette Stevenson referred to earlier on today. She lost out on £75 of universal credit per month just because of her age. In the words of one young single mother, I do not understand how someone over 25 gets more for being in exactly the same situation that I am, and I find it hard to disagree with her. This year, one of the poverty alliance calls is for fair and sustainable funding for third sector organisations. We know the significant contribution that our third sector makes to support our most vulnerable communities, with many of them actively targeting the gendered nature of poverty and the structural inequalities that undermine women. I spoke recently with one parent family Scotland who provides vital support to lone parents and children in Lanarkshire where I live and across wider Scotland. They offer a telephone helpline that is highly valued by communities. However, they tell me that calls for advice are increasingly becoming emergency crisis calls as more and more families reach a cliff edge. Their resources are being spread even thinner. In closing, I am certainly proud that eradicating child poverty is a core commitment of Scotland's programme for government and that our Scottish child payment is a world first, a game changer that we have heard. However, we must still strive to support our invaluable third sector in every way that we can, despite the financial challenges that our Government and this Parliament face. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I congratulate Collette Stevenson for securing this important debate on challenge poverty week. Tackling poverty and inequality is a single biggest challenge facing Scotland and requires continued urgent and sustained action. In Scotland, we are introducing a fairer social security system. One with a stigma and conditionality of the DWP system plays no part. There is no two-child limit that is favoured by the two parties that aspire to govern at Westminster. Instead, we have a Scottish child payment which was increased to £25 and described by the child poverty action group as an absolute game changer in the fight to end child poverty. I will be the first to acknowledge that more can be done and I welcome that we will review the level of the payment in future budgets. Presiding Officer, in my hometown of Clydebank and across my constituency, the residents do more than just challenge poverty for one week in the year. They do it every day. Fairly Food Share provides a food pantry for residents run by a small team of volunteers. Damir Barkley community pantry run a food pantry, drop-in cafe, clothing drives, indoor bowling and free craft groups. Local Patrick food parcels offer free food pantry, chatty cafes for residents to have a warm meal and a chat with others and moving nights for kids and so much more. The kindness, warmth and dedication of these groups to help others and challenge poverty is unmatched. The generosity of the whole Clydebank and MoGuy community who come together to support those who are struggling is a lifeline. I am so grateful for what these groups do but it should not have to be this way. Presiding Officer, the existence of food banks in the 21st century is an outrage. Unfortunately, Westminster policies have made them essential for many policies that have afflicted decades of austerity and dreadful cuts to social security. The Trussell Trust, the organisation that runs around two thirds of the food banks in the UK, went from giving out around 61,000 food parcels in 2010 to £2.5 million in 2020. In 2022, David Cameron tweeted that he had been volunteering at his local food bank for the past two years. That truly is a darkness of ironies given that food bank usage went up by 2,612 per cent whilst he was Prime Minister and that is not something to be proud of. In the face of the current Westminster costs of living crises, we need action from the UK Government that will challenge poverty. We need to see the £20 universal credit uplift reinstated and increased. The born two-child cap and the rape clause abolished. The energy bill rebate reintroduced to help ensure that no one has to decide between heating and eating. A report from the Abilure children's charity last year found that families in receipt of universal credit are having their monthly income reduced on average by £80 to cover debts such as universal credit advances. It is such a difficult time for families. Surely the Westminster Government should suspend these deductions and not reduce an already inadequate level of support. I am so thankful for the work that the local food parties do in my constituency, but we should all fight for a Scotland where they are not needed. No one should ever be unable to afford the essentials. We want to adjust in Ecos Scotland and I really truly believe that we can achieve some of that with cross-party support. However, we need a UK Government to act. With the current Tory Government or hopeful Labour Party, who will keep the two-child policy, we will never see a truly equal poverty-free Scotland. Only with the control of our all-affairs will we see that. I am now calling Emma Roddick to respond to the debate. I want to thank those members who have stayed for tonight's important debate as well and Collette Stevenson for bringing it forward. She has a strong voice for social justice in this Parliament and indeed out with it, and I always find her contributions well-informed and insightful. I do enjoy it when we can cross-party look at an issue like challenging poverty, which could and should be a unanimous effort and mainly agree with each other. I welcome the comments from Miles Briggs about the need to consider intersecting inequalities and also for the shout-out of some Scottish Government policies, which saves me a job. Challenge poverty week is an important event in our calendars, or it should be. I have been glad to hear of MSPs across the chamber making use of the raised focus and awareness to shine a spotlight on issues or see best practice in their constituencies. I will highlight Stuart McMillan's contribution because he talked about taking a different approach to surgeries, holding cost of living surgeries in town halls, places that people will go to for other reasons. This morning, I was in front of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee, and Maggie Chapman and I were discussing the idea of so-called hard-to-reach groups. She described them as easy to ignore. What Stuart McMillan has done here, and he is not alone in this, but I congratulate his efforts, is to go to where people are already, rather than ask them to come to him and bring support organisations to them, rather than signposts and hope for the best. Its events-like challenge poverty week should allow us to scrutinise our own efforts to help constituents. Any MSP of any party or none should surely wish to do, and to pick up on best practice like this. As Beatrice Wishart put it, we all have a responsibility to end poverty. I was glad to be able to visit Taxiubist during challenge poverty week to discuss food poverty and the extra challenges faced by island communities in access to affordable and appropriate food, and to get into the same issues that Beatrice Wishart described. Though energy is of course reserved, we have reacted to the increased cost of living in the islands through a range of measures, including tripling the fuel and security fund, which I know is supporting various efforts in island communities across Scotland. I also know that colleagues across government used the week similarly. The First Minister met with anti-poverty summit attendees with lived experience of poverty supported by the Poverty Alliance continuing that focus that he has placed on this issue since taking office. However, that is not to say that the Scottish Government only wants to challenge poverty once a week out of the year. It is one of our three interdependent and defining missions alongside growing a green wellbeing economy and improving public services. It runs through everything we do, and all ministers are determined to do their bit within their portfolios to create that fairer Scotland that we all want to see. Last year and this, the Scottish Government has allocated almost £3 billion to support policies that tackle poverty and protect people as far as possible during the on-going cost of living crisis. Modelling estimates that 90,000 fewer children will live in relative and absolute poverty this year as a result of this Government's policies with poverty levels 9 per centage points lower than they would have been otherwise. That includes lifting an estimated 50,000 children out of relative poverty through the Scottish child payment. We have transformed social security provision in Scotland. I couldn't overstate that. I remember being genuinely overwhelmed with emotion when I visited Social Security Scotland in Dundee for the first time, hearing just how different the application process for disability benefits now is and how strong the support for applicants now is. On Marie McNair's point, we are the first nation in the UK to publish a plan to end the need for food banks, so we are doing things differently here, and it is making a difference. Clare Adamson referred to the recent Joseph Rowntree Foundation report. I want to be clear that the fact that destitution has risen less in Scotland than the rest of the UK is not a matter to celebrate. I can't bring myself to take joy in a lower rise in destitution than other countries, especially when we know that, with more powers, more fiscal flexibility or different UK Government decisions, that trend could be going the right way down. We want to end destitution in Scotland, so that our policies within limited powers are having an impact on destitution being allowed to continue is welcome, but we want to do more than mitigate. We want to lead on eradicating poverty. Scotland has the opportunity to join our neighbours in the EU as an independent nation—fairer, wealthier, happier. Scotland simply cannot afford to be shackled to a Westminster system that is driving more children into poverty, overseeing one of the highest levels of income inequality in Europe, and not only failing to react to but creating situations that force people into destitution. Co-cab Stewart was right to point out that every time the Scottish Government takes a step, makes an investment to tackle poverty, we seem to then contend with yet another policy change, a welfare cap, a cut or some other contradictory action down south that makes our job harder, or even removes money from that same household budget that we're trying to top up. And sadly, as Stewart McMillan pointed out, it looks like this is set to continue no matter who occupies down and straight. UK Labour has signed itself right up to some of the most punitive and cruel Tory policies, like the two-child limit, which can only serve to further entrench child poverty. I was glad to hear Richard Leonard's eloquent takedown of the two-child cap, and he was right to highlight the decisions that exist in here—politicians, Governments—we get to choose our priorities, choose what we want to spend money on, and what the Scottish Government has done is make that investment, he described, with the Scottish child payments introduction and then increases. I genuinely pay tribute to him being the first Scottish Labour member I've heard in such a debate unequivocally calling on his own UK party colleagues to take action on this. I can only hope they listen, because I would much rather see a UK Labour commit to helping us lift children out of poverty rather than having to keep bringing up this disappointment in debates with Scottish Labour. What's clear here is that, while sadly too many still suffer poverty, we are making a difference while fighting against the tide. Just imagine what we could do with the full powers of independence. Thank you, Mr. That concludes the debate, and I close this meeting of Parliament.