What was really underlying John Swinney’s comments to The Herald that the Scottish Child Payment shouldn’t be raised further?

The First Minister’s argument was that hiking it again would disincentivise people to work.

Hmmn. The trouble is, this jars with pretty much everything he and his ministers have said about it before. Just last summer Mr Swinney hailed “our game-changing Scottish Child Payment”, which had helped keep “100,000 children out of relative poverty”. It has been hiked several times before, with each increase explained as part of the drive to meet what Mr Swinney calls his “top priority” – meeting the target of reducing relative child poverty to 10 per cent by 2030.

Child poverty is falling in Scotland while it rises in other parts of the UK largely because of this policy, a source of justified pride for ministers.

How strange then that just as the latest accounting shows an interim target has been significantly missed, the First Minister backs off raising the child payment any further.

Read more by Rebecca McQuillan

Campaigners are fed up and confused, and understandably so. They want to understand what Mr Swinney is basing his concerns on. After all, most recipients of the Scottish Child Payment (SCP) are in work, are they not? The Scottish Government’s own analysis shows the child payment isn’t putting people off getting jobs and campaigners are aware of none that suggests raising it further........

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