THE SNP are facing demands to “set an example” for Labour and use Holyrood’s budget to axe the two-child benefit cap north of the Border.
While the party has called for it to be scrapped in Westminster, it has so far resisted calls to use the powers of the Scottish Government to ditch the policy in Scotland, saying it does not have enough money amid a challenging fiscal situation.
Analysis from the House of Commons library has found that Scotland's block grant from Westminster this year is the lowest since devolution began.
Alba MSP Ash Regan has urged her former SNP colleagues to back a motion she has laid in the Scottish Parliament, calling on the Scottish Government to mitigate the policy.
Her motion calls on the SNP to “fund the full mitigation of the two-child benefit cap in Scotland for the remainder of the financial year 2024-25”.
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It is estimated that scrapping the policy, which limits the amount people with more than two children can claim in benefits, would cost the UK Government £2.5 billion.
No exact figures are available for Scotland, but in 2018, then-Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard scrapping it north of the Border would cost £69 million, or £87m in today’s money.
Regan told The National: “It is a scandal that in energy-rich Scotland, we have one in four children living in poverty in 2024. Lifting children out of poverty should be a national mission above party politics.
“My motion allows the Scottish Government to set an example for the new Labour UK Government and pressure them to lift the two-child cap in their first budget. The SNP at Westminster is calling for this, yet at Holyrood, they won’t back the same campaign led by Alba.
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“I am calling on my former SNP colleagues to show that Holyrood can be competent and ambitious again by working together constructively to prioritising lifting Scotland’s children out of poverty – the root cause of so many of our society’s challenges.”
No SNP MSPs have backed her motion and neither have they backed a motion from Labour’s Paul O’Kane which calls for the cap to be “removed as soon as the financial circumstances allow”.
The SNP were approached for comment.
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