Monday April 13th 2026
Pal Chidambaram, Reform UK candidate for Scottish Parliament for the Midlothian North Constituency.
This View has been written by Pal Chidambaram, Reform UK candidate for the Midlothian North Constituency in the Scottish Parliamentary elections - 7th May 2026.I am a former Bank of England Economic Policy Advisor and the Reform UK candidate for Scottish Parliament for Midlothian.
With nearly 5,000 children living in poverty, Midlothian ranks among the ten worst councils in Scotland. The council’s Local Child Poverty Action Report details a long list of interventions —free school meals, clothing grants, educational maintenance allowance, and Scottish Child Benefit payments. Yet despite these efforts, the trend is not pointing south.
The rate for Midlothian stood at 24.6% in 2023–24, up from 23.2% the previous year and 21.8% in 2014–15.
And Midlothian is no outlier. Across Scotland, progress has been negligible. According to the UK Government’s Social Mobility Commission, relative child poverty was 23.5% in 2023–24, barely changed from 24.6% in 2006–07.
This stagnation sits uneasily alongside the Scottish Government’s long-standing promises. Child poverty has been framed as a central mission—from the Achieving Our Potential framework in 2008, to its designation as a statutory obligation in 2017, to the introduction of the Scottish Child Benefit in 2021. The rhetoric has been strong. The results, not so impressive.
Conditions look worse on other indicators. Persistent child poverty—children living in relative poverty for three or more consecutive years—has risen from 14% in 2017 to 23% in 2023–24.
If Scotland is serious about tackling child poverty, it should look more closely at countries that have actually succeeded. Poland stands out. On the closest available equivalent EU measure, child poverty in Poland fell from around 31% in 2009 to roughly 13–14% today. This is widely recognised as one of Europe’s clearest success stories.
So why did Poland succeed where Scotland has not?
The first and most important difference is economic growth. Between 2007 and 2025, per capita income in Poland grew by 85% in real terms. In Scotland, the increase was just 10%.
Growth changes everything. In a growing economy, jobs are easier to find. Wages rise faster as employers compete for talent. There is no more effective way to reduce child poverty than enabling adults to secure stable, well-paid employment with scope for rising earnings.
Growth also expands the government’s fiscal capacity. Rising tax revenues make it easier to fund social programmes sustainably. Poland’s Family 500+ programme began as a targeted intervention but, backed by economic growth, was expanded into a universal benefit and later increased from 500 to 800 zloty.
The second difference lies in taxation. In 2009, Poland reformed its tax system to strengthen incentives and boost competitiveness. It simplified its structure from three bands—19%, 30%, and 40%—to two: 18% and 32%, and over time brought down the rates further to 12% and 32%. A simpler system, with lower rates, made work and progression more attractive and helped Poland compete with other EU economies.
Scotland has moved in the opposite direction. What was once a simple three-band system has become a six-band structure, with higher rates at the top. The result is a tax regime that is now less competitive than the rest of the UK, with meaningfully higher marginal rates.
There is a persistent belief in some political circles that ever more progressive taxation—squeezing higher earners harder—will automatically generate more revenue and reduce poverty. But people with experience in the real economy know that charging higher prices on the product sold does not always mean higher revenues. Poland recognised this. Its tax system is not among the most progressive; it raises significantly more revenue from VAT and Excise than from income tax, while income tax dominates government revenue in the UK.
The third difference is how money is spent. Poland’s net post-tax welfare spending is 19% of GDP, compared with 26% in the UK. Yet within that smaller envelope, Poland allocates 16% of its welfare budget to families and children, compared with 11% in the UK. Poland is clearly prioritising the welfare of its children more than the UK.
For Midlothian to meet its 2023–27 goal of eliminating child poverty, repeating the same approach will not be enough. It requires a Scottish government that reforms the tax system, get the spending priorities right, stimulates growth and drives job creation in and around the region.
Without that shift, the gap between ambition and reality will only continue to widen.
