So the SNP has a plan to wipe out child poverty? You could have fooled me |
The Scottish Budget will be keenly watched, with measures to eradicate child poverty coming under particular scrutiny. The First Minister John Swinney says it’s his government’s priority but there is no clear roadmap for delivering it. Without one, and with targets already missed, this risks becoming yet another high-profile fail for the Scottish Government, writes Herald columnist Rebecca McQuillan
Why do they do it? Why do politicians make promises they don’t know how to keep?
That’s a question that dogs the Scottish Government, which has a record of making a very big deal of its promises and then failing to deliver on them. Edited highlights include the promise to cut climate emissions by 75 per cent by 2030, issued amid much self-congratulation but since scrapped; and “substantially eliminating” the attainment gap, courtesy of Nicola Sturgeon, who asked to be judged on it and then never came close to achieving it.
John Swinney’s big promise, from the moment he became SNP leader, was eliminating child poverty. His language is a shade more circumspect than Sturgeon’s. He says child poverty is the Scottish Government’s “single most important objective”, which leaves a little more wiggle room, but he’s trumpeted it so often and........