To ask the First Minister, regarding the impact on child poverty levels in Scotland, what assessment the Scottish Government has made of recent research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies on the impact of the two-child benefit cap. (S6F-03277)

The report shows the scale of the impact of the two-child limit. An extra 250,000 children in the United Kingdom will be affected by it next year and an extra 670,000 will be affected by the end of the next session of the UK Parliament. Those households will be an average of £4,300 worse off, which represents 10 per cent of their income. The evidence is overwhelmingly clear that scrapping the Westminster policy will immediately lift children out of poverty. It is frankly breathtaking that the Labour Party has committed to keeping the two-child benefit cap in place, offering no change to the Tories’ austerity agenda.

As the First Minister has outlined, the IFS research indicates that, when it has been fully rolled out, the two-child benefit cap, which is supported by both Labour and the Tories, will affect one in five children and will cost families an average of £4,300 a year. What assessment has the Scottish Government made of what the impact on child poverty levels would be if an incoming UK Government reversed that cruel policy?

Recent analysis by the Government has estimated that reversing the two-child limit and reintroducing the family element of universal credit would lift 10,000 children in Scotland out of poverty. That would be a welcome addition to the effectiveness of the child poverty measures that the Government is already taking, which include the Scottish child payment and other measures, as a consequence of which we are keeping 100,000 children out of poverty.

It would be of assistance to us in achieving the fundamental aspiration of this Government, which is to eradicate child poverty, if we were to have the support of the United Kingdom Government through the lifting of the two-child limit, rather than the prolonging of child poverty as a consequence of the maintenance of that immoral policy.