Last week, a Sunday Herald investigation by Neil Mackay highlighted the shocking reality of child poverty in Scotland. It is a scourge that the incoming Holyrood government must place at the top of its priority list. What should be done? We asked four leading thinkers to suggest radical solutions for our politicians ... and ourselves

Pay families to bring up their children

John Dickie, head of the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) in Scotland THE next crop of Scottish ministers must be made to step up a gear to finally end the scandal of poverty in a country as rich as ours. But voters and politicians need to understand what poverty really means for families in Scotland - which is why the debate sparked by last week's Sunday Herald report is so important.

The challenges all families face are magnified 10-fold for those struggling on shockingly low wages and woefully inadequate benefits. The additional problems linked to drugs, alcohol, physical and mental ill-health wreak their worst damage on those with the least resources to protect themselves. But politicians must not let the symptoms associated with poverty distract them from tackling the underlying causes. Lack of a decent income lies at the heart of poverty.

The challenge facing the next Scottish government is to ensure all families have an income adequate to the task of bringing up children. Although key tax, benefit and minimum wage policy levers are reserved to Westminster, Scottish ministers must be far more radical in removing the devolved barriers to an adequate income, including the lack of affordable childcare that stops parents taking up education and employment opportunities.

They must support employers to ensure jobs are decently paid and genuinely accessible to people with parenting responsibilities, especially those who have been out of work for long periods. They must end the means-testing of free school meals that leaves parents who move into work, however low-paid, needing to find up to £27 a week to ensure their children get a healthy lunch each day.

And they must build on current policy to overcome the lack of advice and information that leaves families missing out on millions of pounds in benefits and tax credits. Ministers must also do more to use their influence to ensure policies emanating from Westminster support, and don't undermine, anti-poverty action.

There has been progress since the last Holyrood elections but a quarter of a million children are still in poverty. Those who aspire to govern must commit themselves to current targets to end child poverty by 2020. That means ensuring families have the resources to protect their children from society's threats, but also the resources to take advantage of all Scotland has to offer.

Stop demanding taxes from the poor

Brian Monteith former Scottish Tory education spokesman THERE is no such thing as child poverty. There are families that live in poverty, which means children live in poverty as a result, but without recognising the crucial role of relieving family poverty we shall never truly tackle the shameful circumstances in which some children live.

By raising the incomes of poor families, in absolute terms and relative to the rest of us, we can do the greatest good and the power to do this rests with Gordon Brown. Sadly, he continues to believe he should be a benefactor soothing people's poverty rather than a liberator lifting them out of it.

There are far too many poor people paying tax. Every year Gordon Brown collects £30 billion from working families to whom he then hands out £30bn in benefits. Not everyone claims the benefits or qualifies for them. Brown apparently likes it this way, but it could all be so different. A flatter tax system would encourage those out of work to seek employment - for too many there is little incentive as the relationship between benefits and taxes makes kicking your heels more attractive.

We require a flatter tax system that encourages those in work to be more productive - to work harder for themselves because they keep a greater share of what they earn. This is crucial, as it helps pay for the tax cuts the poorest need and deserve.

When John F Kennedy cut tax rates in the early 1960s, federal revenues increased. When, in the 1980s, Reagan and Thatcher cut tax rates, the revenues increased. It is a policy with a proven record.

In Britain today you start to pay tax after the first £5225 of income. That is legalised theft. The fact that means-tested tax credits - Gordon Brown's munificent micro-management - sometimes make up for the tax he's taken is no consolation. The poorest in society - the families where child poverty can be found - should be taken out of tax altogether.

Raising the income tax starting threshold to earnings around £12,000 a year would take over a million people out of tax. Some research suggests it could be set as high as £20,000 - removing the need for tax-credit schemes. If Westminster is not prepared to take this action then a Scottish parliament with full tax-raising powers could do it.

While not the only solution, this should be a central component of any programme for tackling poverty. To ignore it is to play Gordon Brown's game of munificent benefactor, a modern day Wizard of Oz spinning the wheels and running people's lives. Is there not a Dorothy out there?

Brian Monteith's book, Paying The Piper - From A Taxing Lament To A Rewarding Jig, is published by Birlinn, £6.99

Harness the X-Factor, let the kids have fun

Pat Kane, author of The Play Ethic: A Manifesto For A Different Way Of Living THE comfortable middle class looks at "poverty" situations, and either noisily or silently notes the contradictions: incapable, wearied parents, badly-maintained domestic spaces, unenlightened eating habits, living on benefits. Yet the same poor families and children have mountain bikes and PSPs, Sky telly and DVDs.

It's time we recognised that these cultural entertainments have poured into the cavity left behind by the end of industrial identity. Let's remember that this identity - which united people as "communities" - was itself forged out of harshness, a systematic objectification of individuals by the factory system, producing "hard men" for "hard times". Do we really think that generations of the psychological costs of industrial identity can be waved away by some magic wand of "education and training for the service economy"? How easily do we think we can move the bulk of this population towards "soft men" for "soft times"?

Drugs also pour into the same cavity, assuaging the same raging psychic need to replace a sense of solid identity, one that was itself a brutal construct. So the ex-working-class in Scotland are suffering a double-whammy, in terms of their subjective and intersubjective lives: damned by what industrialism did to their wiring, and damned for coping miserably with the aftermath. Yes, child poverty is spiritual and cultural as much as material and economic. But I don't think we recognise just how damaged many parents are by the legacies of the Scottish 19th and 20th centuries, how emotionally unskilled the industrial age has made them.

And conversely, in terms of engaging with children of these generations right now, we need to accept that they have a "play ethic" rather than a "work ethic". Their cultural conditioning, through all these interactive entertainments, is towards performance, self-expression and exuberant team-work, rather than dutiful labour in the retail parks. Instead of constantly demonising this conditioning, could we regard it as a source of potential energy and advance?

Beyond the usual invocations of "sports" and "volunteering", we need to think of a new vision for young people's active development - perhaps one that they themselves could be consulted about. What is so wrong with the X-Factor society? Why can't social infrastructure be as supportive of performers, individualists and artists as it is of "good workers" in the retail or service economy? When will we read the writing on the wall - that we need a positive, creative narrative for productive lives in Scotland, subtle and compassionate and wide-ranging, to begin to really address the destructive effects of our industrial age?

Set children to work and pay them for it

Dr John McKendrick, co-director, Scottish Poverty Information Unit, Glasgow Caledonian University IF we were serious about eradicating child poverty, we wouldn't be having this debate. We have the wealth and the means, but not the will to end child poverty today. Poverty is widely understood to afflict those living in households earning less than 60% of median income. So the solution is simple: set minimum income guarantees to ensure that every household with children receives at least 60% of the median. In other words, increase welfare payments and set a higher minimum wage level, index-linked to median wage rises.

But it won't happen. Employment and welfare minister Jim Murphy, the Labour MP for East Renfrewshire, does not believe welfare should be set at a level which would remove claimants and their dependents from poverty. According to Murphy, work is the only acceptable and viable escape route. At this point in the debate, opinions become entrenched around the undeserving poor/all poor are deserving divide. I truly believe that the UK government and the Scottish Executive want to eradicate child poverty, but they consider this goal to be outweighed by the risk of giving more than they think is deserved, to those not earning enough to escape poverty. We need to prioritise eradicating child poverty and be prepared to accept some cost.

I believe in making work pay and in the social value of being a worker. Why shouldn't this extend to older children? The private, public and third sector could all play a role in providing meaningful opportunities for children to contribute positively to our communities and businesses. Many children already do (as unpaid carers, for example). Of course, this sounds dangerously close to calls by politicians for a "modern national service". But we must reward children financially for their efforts. All secondary school-aged children should have the chance to work a maximum of six hours per week at the minimum wage. If we are concerned about a generation of children who don't value work, we must allow them to experience the value of employment.

The Scottish Executive's Closing The Opportunity Gap programme is a welcome attempt to focus on the most enduring aspects of Scottish poverty over which we in Scotland can exert influence. Scotland's poor are not a homogeneous group. We need to work much more closely with them to find solutions that work for them. This requires more multi-agency team-working across departmental and institutional boundaries.

Finally, we need to value collective social provision and service delivery, which offers affordable participation for those living in our poorest areas. And we must ensure that all children can afford to participate in the opportunities we provide. For example, if we want to broaden children's horizons, might we not set benchmarks and expectations for school trips and travel throughout the school years? Why, for example, should overseas holidays only be the preserve of children whose parents can afford them?

Click here to watch our 10-minute film on child poverty in Scotland