This year’s Challenge Poverty Week runs from 5 October to 11 October 2026. In this blog, SCoSS Chair, Ed Pybus, writes about the value of social security in addressing poverty and supporting human rights.

The Scottish social security system is built around a set of principles which are set out in the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 and apply across the system.

These principles are an important part of our work at the Scottish Commission on Social Security and include the principle that the Scottish social security system should contribute to reducing poverty in Scotland.

That is a fairly clear ambition. It also gives us something against which we can judge progress.

What difference is social security making?

There is good evidence that investment in Scottish social security is making a difference, particularly to child poverty. The Scottish Child Payment provides regular financial support to families with children and has become an important part of the Scottish Government’s approach to reducing child poverty. Scottish Government analysis estimates that the Scottish Child Payment reduced the relative child poverty rate by around five percentage points in 2023-24 and kept around 50,000 children out of poverty. The Scottish Government has also committed to increasing the Scottish Child Payment for families with young children, who are one of the priority groups identified in the child poverty delivery plan. Social security can make a real difference to people’s lives and to poverty rates.

But it is not the whole story. Around one in five people in Scotland are still living in poverty. That means we need to keep asking what the Scottish social security system can do to contribute to reducing poverty in Scotland.

Looking at social security through a human rights lens

The principles in the Act are not the only tool available to us.

The Act also requires us to have regard to relevant international human rights obligations when carrying out our work. Not only is social security, in itself, a human right. It is also closely linked to other rights, including rights to an adequate standard of living, food, housing and health.

The incorporation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child into Scots law has strengthened the focus on children’s rights. It means that we need to consider the effect of social security policy on children and young people and whether it supports the rights they are entitled to.

But our human rights responsibilities go wider than children’s rights. The UK has ratified a range of international human rights treaties, all of which are used in our work. These also provide a wider framework for thinking about poverty and social security.  A recent report from the Scottish Human Rights Commission makes this case. It looks at how a human rights approach could help tackle poverty in Scotland. It argues for a shift in how we think about poverty, including a greater focus on people’s rights and on the responsibilities of public bodies to uphold them.

For social security, one thing this means is thinking about people who use the system as ‘rights holders’. If people are rights holders, then we need to think about whether they can actually realise those rights. Can they access the support they are entitled to? Is the support sufficient? Are there barriers that stop people getting it? It also means continuing to listen to the people who use the system and involving them in decisions about how it should work. Just as importantly, it is about helping people to recognise and understand themselves as rights holders, with legitimate entitlements

Poverty does not affect everyone in the same way

The human rights approach also helps us think about the different ways in which poverty can affect people. For example, the Scottish Human Rights Commission’s work in the Highlands and Islands highlighted the difficulties that people can face in accessing economic, social and cultural rights in rural and island communities.

There are other groups who can face particular barriers too. The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Dr Michael O’Flaherty, recently argued for a stronger human rights approach to tackling child poverty. His work has highlighted the importance of understanding which groups are most likely to be missed by existing approaches, and he has highlighted recently arrived migrant, and members of the LGBTQ+ and the Roma/Traveller community as groups who, across Europe, face a higher risk of poverty, and that may be being missed in current anti-poverty strategies.

We know that poverty and inequality can intersect with other aspects of people’s lives and that someone’s experience of social security can be shaped by their age, disability, ethnicity, immigration status, gender, sexuality, where they live and barriers to communicating public services. Such groups are also likely to have one or more protected characteristics under the Equality Act. The Public Sector Equality Duty requires us, and other public bodies, to give due regard to ending discrimination, advancing equality and fostering good relations between people who have a protected characteristic and those who don’t.

For us, understanding those different experiences is part of understanding whether the social security system is working as it should.

Bringing this into our Charter work

As well as scrutinising regulations, we also have a statutory role in reporting on how well the expectations set out in the Social Security Charter are being met. And again the principles in the 2018 Act and our human rights obligations help guide this work.

Last year, we looked at the experiences of people with communication needs and the barriers they can face when accessing social security. We heard about the difficulties that can arise when systems are designed around assumptions about how people communicate.

This year, we commissioned research into the experiences of people for whom English is a second language which again highlighted how different barriers can overlap. Language can be a barrier in itself, but it can also interact with, for example, digital exclusion, a lack of awareness of entitlements and difficulties navigating public services.

Our future Charter work will look at the experiences of groups who can face a higher risk of poverty or particular barriers when accessing social security. This include people moving to Scotland and LGBTQ+ people.

These groups are very different from each other, of course. But there is a common reason for looking at their experiences. If we want to know whether the social security system is meeting its commitments, we need to understand the experiences of people who may find it harder to use the system.

Keeping the principles in view

The Scottish Parliament agreed the principles in the Social Security (Scotland) Act unanimously. They provide a clear statement about what social security in Scotland is supposed to be. They give us a way of thinking about whether the system is doing what it was intended to do.

There has been real progress. Scottish Child Payment shows what can be achieved when social security is used to increase household incomes and reduce child poverty. But poverty remains widespread. Some people continue to face significant barriers to getting the support they are entitled to. And some groups are more likely than others to be missed.

That is why our work remains important. For SCoSS, the principles, the human rights framework and the experiences of people who use social security all form part of that work. They help us ask whether the system is living up to the ambitions that Parliament set for it.

That is a question we will continue to ask.

Ed Pybus
Chairperson
Scottish Commission on Social Security