MSP's first speech raises the spectre of child poverty

ONE of Labour's new Lothians MSPs has called on the SNP government to take "early and decisive action" to tackle child poverty.

Kezia Dugdale, elected from the top-up list, used her maiden speech in the Scottish Parliament to attack the Nationalists' record on improving the lot of disadvantaged youngsters.

Ms Dugdale - the first of the parliament's 47 new MSPs to speak in a debate - said: "The brutal truth is that just over 200,000 children in Scotland live in relative poverty today." She claimed in the history of the Scottish Parliament that number had only ever gone down under Labour and up under the SNP.

She said: "Child poverty is so deep rooted, so entrenched in our society, that this must be the government that makes serious inroads if we are, as a nation, to have any prospect of achieving the 2020 target of eradicating child poverty.

"I admire the SNP for their chutzpah, for the passion they hold for separation - however misguided. I only wish they had the same fire in their belly for tackling poverty."

Ms Dugdale quoted a report by the Princes Trust which said one in four young people had "lost the ability to hope at all" and warned of a developing "youth underclass".

She said her first engagement as an MSP had been to visit the Canongate Youth Project, which had been working with young people in Edinburgh since 1977.

She said: "I was astonished to hear them talk about their lives. How they considered their community to be a dump, how they hated the police, how they boasted about living for the weekend - a chance to drink and lark with their friends.

"When pushed, when really given the opportunity to express themselves they opened up a little more and explained how they felt harassed by the police. They walk in numbers for their own safety, but the police seek to break them up. They are regularly stopped and searched, they feel sometimes with good reason - sometimes without.

"Their experience of life in their community left them without self-respect, without good reason to hope. The voices of these young people must be heard in this parliament." Ms Dugdale's speech came in a debate yesterday on "taking Scotland forward".

First Minister Alex Salmond said the economy, reform of public services and tackling alcohol and sectarianism were the top priorities for the new government.

He spoke of the "social contract" which saw government deliver policies such as free personal care, abolition of tuition fees, freezing the council tax and the scrapping of prescription charges and in return people were willing to accept a wage freeze and public spending restraints.

He said: "For the sacrifices we must all make, there is a reward in the form of a society geared to our values."