CLAIM:
“Gordon Brown warns child poverty in Scotland is getting 'worse every day' as he calls for UK Government action” – Daily Record headline, August 7, 2025.
DOORSTEP ANSWER:
Relative child poverty rates in Scotland are not "getting worse", but have fallen from 25% in 2021 to 23% in 2024, according to the most recent statistics available.
At the same time, UK-wide child poverty rates have remained at 30%, while rates in England and Wales have risen. These figures are after housing costs, which experts say is the most reliable measure.
WHAT DID GORDON BROWN SAY?
However, the former prime minister’s comments were actually more specific to his local area.
Brown represented the constituencies of Dunfermline East and then Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy at Westminster, before leaving the parliament in 2015.
He told BBC Radio 4 on Thursday: “I live in the constituency in which I grew up. I still live here. I see every day this situation getting worse.
"I did not think I would see the kind of poverty I saw when I was growing up when we had slum housing ... this is a return to the kind of poverty of 60 years ago and I think we've got to act now."
Brown went on: "This problem is getting worse. It's going to worsen over the next few years because there's a built-in escalator in the poverty figures because of the two-child rule.”
The former Labour leader called on the current UK administration to scrap the two-child benefit cap, suggesting that tax rises aimed at slot machines and online casinos could pay for the policy.
WHAT’S THE TRUTH?
The Daily Record’s headline, that child poverty in Scotland is getting worse, is not supported by official government figures.
As mentioned above, relative child poverty rates in Scotland have fallen from 25% in 2021 to 23% in 2024, according to the most recent statistics available.
At the same time, UK-wide child poverty rates have remained at 30%. However, rates in England and Wales have climbed in recent years, with both at 31% in the latest figures.
Brown, however, spoke specifically about his local area in Fife.
Data from the Department of Work and Pensions shows the number of children in low income families in the region has been decreasing in recent years.
According to the official figures, Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy had 3851 children living in families living with relative low income before housing costs in 2023/24. This is down from 4032 the previous year, and 4609 in 2019/20.
In Glenrothes and Mid Fife, the DWP data shows that 4680 children were in families in relative low income before housing costs in 2023/24. This was down from 5075 the previous year, and 5623 in 2019/20.
So, across the constituencies which Brown used to represent, the number of children living in low income households appears to be declining.
The DWP figures show that, in Reeves’s Leeds West and Pudsey constituency, the situation has been getting worse.
In 2023/4, there were 6934 children in families with relative low income. This was up from 6519 the year before, and 6324 in 2019/2020.
In Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s constituency of Holborn and St Pancras, DWP figures show there were 5357 children in families with relative low income in 2023/24. This was a drop on the previous year’s 5569, but above 2019/20’s figure of 5239.
FACT-CHECK RATING
False. Child poverty rates in Scotland are not getting “worse every day”. In fact, the trend is downwards. Experts say this is due to interventions such as the Scottish Child Payment, as well as lower housing costs north of the Border.
However, in England and Wales, child poverty rates are indeed worsening. Brown is right to say that scrapping the two-child benefit cap would likely help reverse this trend.
In Scotland, the SNP have already committed to doing so, meaning the gap in child poverty rates on either side of the border is likely to widen – unless the UK Government takes similar action.
