Brown wants Scottish and UK ministers to work together on ‘terrible’ poverty

The Scottish and UK governments are “stuck in a rut” when they should be working together to tackle “completely unacceptable” levels of poverty, former prime minister Gordon Brown has said.

The one-time Labour leader spoke about the “terrible poverty in our country” as he predicted the coming winter could be as bad as the previous year had been for struggling families.

With a poll also showing that more than half of Scots believe constitutional wrangling has left the country “stuck in a rut”, Mr Brown made a plea for rival politicians to “work together in the interests of the people of Scotland”.

His comments came as new research for Our Scottish Future, the think tank he set up, found 53% of people questioned agree that after a “decade of constitutional debate, Scotland now feels stuck in a rut”,with only 10% disagreeing with this.

And speaking at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the former prime minister complained rows between the SNP Government in Edinburgh and the Conservative administration in London had turned politics into a “Punch and Judy show”.

“Something has got to be done about the terrible poverty in our country,” Mr Brown told the audience.

“People are in many cases near destitution, and this is something that is completely unacceptable in the year 2023.”

He warned: “The next winter is going to be as bad, if not worse, than the last winter. The last winter it was energy prices and food prices, this winter it is rent and other bills … bills have gone up in almost every area and families can not make ends meet.”

His comments came after the number of Scots living in poverty reached its highest for almost 20 years, with Scottish Government figures showing more than 1.1 million adults, children and pensioners are affected.

That includes 250,000 children – almost one in four (24%) of all youngsters – who are living in relative poverty.

Mr Brown said: “I’m now seeing poverty I never thought I would see again.

“There’s destitution, because there are huge numbers of people either homeless or threatened with homelessness.

“And we’re stuck in rut. If you look at it you’ve got a Conservative government and you’ve got an SNP government and they don’t talk to each other.

“I mean, how can you solve a problem, whether it’s climate change or poverty, when you have got two governments with powers … and they don’t talk to each other.

“So we’re in a rut, it’s a stand-off, it’s like a Punch and Judy show all the time.”

However, he attacked the “ultranationalism” of the Scottish Government, saying it had set up its own devolved benefits agency for “status”.

Mr Brown said £700 million had been spent establishing Social Security Scotland, when Scottish benefit payments could have been handled by the UK’s existing Department for Work and Pensions

The former Labour MP condemned this as a “waste of money”, adding that the “Scottish Government wanted a separate agency for status reasons”.

But SNP MP David Linden said Mr Brown was “siding with the Tories by attacking Scotland’s social security system”.

Mr Linden insisted: “It is absolutely astounding to hear Gordon Brown siding with the Tories by attacking Scotland’s social security system – which is based on fairness, dignity and respect – and standing in the way of more powers to tackle poverty coming to Scotland.

“The SNP has fought long and hard to see additional tax and social security powers devolved to our Parliament, and we’ve used the limited powers we do have alongside our fixed budget, to make Scotland fairer – including through the delivery of 13 new benefits including the game-changing Scottish Child Payment, which is unique in the UK and we have increased to £25 per week per child.

“However, for as long as the key powers to tackle the cost of living remain at Westminster, and we are forced to spend hundreds of millions of pounds mitigating Tory welfare cuts and fighting Labour’s refusal to scrap the brutal two-child cap, in Scotland, we will be tackling poverty with one hand tied behind our back.”

Meanwhile, a UK Government spokesperson said: “We have been consistently clear that the priority for people in Scotland is helping with the cost of living by halving inflation, tackling the NHS waiting times and growing our economy across the whole of the UK.

“Our strong desire is for both governments to fully focus on delivering those priorities, and we hope that there will be no distractions from that.

“Our raising of benefits in line with inflation, increasing of the National Living Wage and the extra £82 million we have provided to help people in Scotland with food, energy and other essential costs are easing these pressures.”