'Living wage' to tackle poverty

By Reevel Alderson
BBC Scotland home affairs correspondent

The report urged the two governments to work together to tackle poverty

The Scottish Government has been urged to introduce a "living wage" for public sector employees.

The call by the STUC comes as a report suggested the government will miss its target of ending child poverty by 2020.

An estimated one in five of Scotland's children - 210,000 - live in low-income poverty.

The Joseph Rowntree Trust said although Scotland's progress in reducing child poverty has been better than that in the UK as a whole, it has stalled.

Its report, "Child poverty in Scotland: taking the next steps" was written by researchers at Glasgow Caledonian University.

Since the SNP government came to power in 2007, its strategy has been to use economic growth to tackle poverty, but the researchers said the current recession has caused problems.

Scotland will be best placed to eradicate child poverty when full responsibility for all tax, spending and social welfare issues come within the control of the Scottish Parliament and Government Scottish Government statement

"The political challenges involved in tackling poverty in a period of economic decline must be acknowledged," they warned.

One suggestion was for the Scottish Government to define a "living wage", and commit to paying this to public sector employees.

It is estimated that up to 25% of the Scottish workforce are employed in the public sector.

The Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) has announced it would campaign for a living wage of £7 an hour, more than the current statutory minimum wage for adults of £5.73 an hour.

Its deputy general secretary, Dave Moxham, said the policy would be hugely symbolic, because the Scottish Government could insist companies supplying it with goods and services also began to pay the increased amount.

Scotland's largest local authority, Glasgow City Council, announced last March that all of its directly-employed workers would be paid at least £7 an hour.

'A scourge'

The Rowntree Trust report acknowledged the main anti-poverty levers such as taxation and welfare are reserved to Westminster.

But it said the UK Government cannot tackle child poverty without Holyrood's co-operation.

It urged the two governments to work more closely together by allowing greater overlap between employment and benefit entitlement - and exploring opportunities to shape welfare reforms to local labour market conditions.

In a statement, the Scottish Government said within its limited devolved powers, it was doing everything possible to tackle child poverty, which continues to be a "scourge on our nation".

It said: "Scotland will be best placed to eradicate child poverty when full responsibility for all tax, spending and social welfare issues come within the control of the Scottish Parliament and Government."