Scotland has had a problem with child poverty for decades.
It’s our epidemic of shame that successive governments – north and south of the Border – have failed to end.
A staggering investigation by this newspaper has shown how more than 175,000 children in Scotland are living below the breadline.
That’s one in every seven children. It’s three or four kids in the average Scottish primary school class.
Many of them will have grown up in families who know nothing other than the struggle to keep food in the fridge and money in the meter.
More often than not, their dip into poverty is a result of social and environmental factors rather than a lack of will to get themselves out of it.
But nowhere else in Scotland – in fact nowhere else in the UK – is it worse than in Govanhill West.
There, among the poor housing stock and vermin, 69 per cent of children are in poverty.
That’s right at the heart of Nicola Sturgeon’s Glasgow Southside constituency, which also includes four other areas among the 10 worst for child poverty.
Those who defend the First Minister will point out that her constituency has always been amongst the poorest in Scotland.
But it’s a heavy tag which stays with her as the SNP attempts to maintain power in Glasgow City Council at next month’s local elections.
Her constituents wouldn’t be wrong to think that having the First Minister as their MSP would act as a driver for change.
The SNP in Holyrood and the Tories in Westminster are both responsible for this epidemic.
Instead of blaming each other, they need to bang their heads together and ensure the current efforts to fix it are properly funded and enhanced.
Only then will the children of Govanhill West – and right across the country – grow up in a better future.
