A shocking new report reveals that 910,000 Scots live in poverty � including 25% of the country�s children. Investigations Editor Neil Mackay looks at the depressing findings and at the human suffering that lies behind the statistics

JACK McConnell will cringe this coming Friday. The first minister is to address a unique event that day at Glasgow Caledonian University unveiling a special five-year study into the extent of poverty in Scotland. For a man who leads a government which claims to put children at the heart of policy, and has vowed to eradicate child poverty, the report, simply entitled Poverty In Scotland 2007, will make extremely miserable reading.

There will be little opportunity for even slick New Labour spin doctors to put a positive gloss on the report. The worst findings include: l One-fifth of the Scottish population, 910,000 people, live in poverty; l One in four Scottish children, 240,000 boys and girls, live in poverty. Back in 1979, only one in eight children lived in poverty; l Of all those experiencing poverty in Scotland, one in five live in Glasgow; l One in 10 of Scotland's rural population is officially poor; l Nearly a quarter of all children living in poverty are in households where an adult is working full-time; l 30% of "poverty pay" - wages which leave the employee below the poverty line - come from the public sector: jobs which are paid for by the government; l 77,000 children officially recognised as living in poverty don't get a free school meal; l Scotland is poorer in the 21st century than it was in the 1960s.

The report, which examines poverty in Scotland over a five-year period up to the beginning of 2007, cannot be sneered at or dismissed. Among the charities and NGOs which wrote the 182-page report are: The Poverty Alliance, The Child Poverty Action Group, the Scottish Poverty Information Unit and the Scottish Drugs Forum.

The report was also written by a host of academics from The Open University, Glasgow Caledonian University, the University of Paisley and the University of Strathclyde. Experts on health, childcare, economics, community development, education, law and social policy also helped compile the report. The most damning data used came from Holyrood own official statistics.

The organisations and authors behind the report are intent on putting poverty right at the top of the political agenda for the forthcoming Holyrood elections. John Dickie, head of Scotland's Child Poverty Action Group, says: "This report is a wake-up call to the public and politicians about the extent of poverty and the hugely damaging effect that it has on all of us.

"Progress in tackling poverty hasn't been fast enough or gone far enough. Westminster and Holyrood need to do better. It is all very well for the government to say that they have lifted some children out of poverty, but that is not much help to the quarter of a million kids in Scotland living in poverty today.

"Half of all children living in poverty have a working parent, so there is no question that people aren't trying to get out of poverty. The problem is that the way out of poverty is very difficult. If there is no pressure from voters to make the government ensure that people are paid wages that lift them out of poverty, then the government will take no action.

"We also need to pressurise the government to invest in a benefits safety net that means no-one is left below the poverty line. All Scottish politicians have failed. "

Peter Kelly, director of the Poverty Alliance, said: "This report throws down a challenge to the political parties. Anyone standing for election to the next parliament has to prove they are ready to act. It is a shameful fact that a fifth of the Scottish population lives in poverty.

"It is intolerable and immoral, and politicians need to lead. Up to now, the discussion by politicians about poverty has been pathetic, as they cynically believe there are no votes in this issue as the poorest people are less likely to vote."

Douglas Hamilton, head of policy with Save the Children Scotland, said: "It is a shameful reality that thousands of children in Scotland go without basic, essential items such as a coat, properly fitting shoes or a warm home. Some 60% of low-income families believe they will never have enough to live on. This is unacceptable in a country with one of the world's strongest economies. Progress is not fast enough. Children can't wait."

one woman's story

ANNE-MARIE Smith doesn't allow people into her home. Not even her best pals are asked inside, she says. Smith is too embarrassed by the state of her house. There's no carpet, it's undecorated, unfurnished, and the doors are hanging off. It's depressing and decrepit, she says.

The reason Smith's house is so run-down - the reason she's embarrassed by her life - is simple: she's poor.

Smith, pictured left, confounds naive middle-class stereotypes about the kind of people who live in profound poverty. She's worked hard her entire life, is a devoted, loving mother, and she's intelligent and articulate.

Nor did Smith drift into poverty. It ambushed her four years ago when she was pregnant with her youngest child, Aislin, pictured left with her mother. When Smith became pregnant, funding for her job as an administrator at the Nautical College in Glasgow was just running out, so she decided to return to full-time education.

If she hadn't become pregnant, life as a mature student would have been difficult, but not impossible. Smith, now 38, has two older children: Steven, 15, who lives with his dad; and Kelly, who is 19. Neither of them was dependent on her, so she could have coped.

But when Aislin came along things changed. Smith didn't want to give up her dream of going to university and getting a degree in politics, so she stuck to her studies, and tried to raise her little girl on the run-down Pollok estate in Glasgow on the paltry benefits the state gives a lone mother.

Smith and her four-year-old daughter survive on £86.90 a week. The money breaks down this way: the state gives Smith £57.45 per week and her child £61.83. In theory, her total benefits come to £119.28. But then the government starts to make deductions. Because Smith receives child benefit, the state takes £17.55 from her total allowance. A further £2.90 is taken off for council tax, and £11.93 is deducted as repayment of a loan she received from social security to buy a fridge freezer.

From the remaining £86.90, she has to pay for gas, electricity, her TV licence, telephone and a travel card to get to and from Stowe College, where she's finishing her diploma in psychology, sociology and history. The college nursery, which cares for Aislin while Smith is in class, costs her £3.22. Once the sums are done, she's left with about £25 a week to pay for food and clothes for her and her child. Most families of four would find it impossible to pay for one takeaway meal on a Friday night on that money, yet Smith has to eke that sum out for seven days.

The rapid about-turn in Smith's way of life is a lesson to most Scots. Four years ago, she was earning £1000 a month and enjoying a good lifestyle that allowed her to take at least one holiday a year. Now she buys her clothes from second-hand stores and charity shops, though, as a woman with pride and dignity, she shops astutely to make sure she looks well-turned out. She aims to look, she says, exactly as she did before poverty came knocking.

"Such a change in lifestyle could happen to anyone," she says over coffee in a cafe in Glasgow's Chinatown, near her college. "It was all down to circumstances beyond my control. I didn't plan to have another baby." Smith's older daughter, Kelly, has taken on the role of surrogate parent. She works and helps her mum out with cash for her little sister's clothes and fresh fruit and vegetables. "Kelly is helping me bring up Aislin," Smith says. "I've put pressure on her and it makes me feel inadequate, but it's impossible to live on £86 a week.

"It's embarrassing to live on benefits. Nobody wants to. I certainly don't. I feel I can't mix with the people I used to any more as our lifestyles are so different. Society looks down on people like me as if we have done wrong, as if it was our fault we are in this situation. People say to me: You've got an education, why are you not working?' I find myself saying that I'm taking a career break. I'm not, I'm just caught in the benefits trap."

The benefits trap means that, if Smith takes on a part-time job she'll end up worse off than if she were on welfare. The cost of childcare alone would probably suck up all additional income from any low-paid, part-time minimum-wage job that would allow her enough time to continue with her education.

"Childcare is the major problem. It's impossible to pay for it. The government says it wants to reduce poverty, but that can't be done unless there is affordable childcare," Smith says. Smith points out that in countries such as Luxembourg, with state-supported childcare, 90% of lone parents work. Here, the percentage is about 50%.

"Free childcare would change society," she says. "Kids would be cared for while their parents get educated. With families in poverty sometimes the lifestyle is handed down from the parents to the children, and the kids will end up uneducated and poor as well. Some children know nothing but poverty. It's become a way of life for them. "

If Smith sounds more knowledgeable than most women trapped in the jaws of poverty, it's because her experience has changed her. She wants to work supporting people in poverty after finishing university, and last year she was at the fifth annual convention of people experiencing poverty held in Brussels in Belgium, and gave evidence before the Scottish parliament about the problem of poverty.

Her greatest fear is that she is teaching her youngest daughter to "grow up to be poor". Smith is "always explaining to her that we don't have money, so she's now at the point where she doesn't ask for things".

Smith struggles with choices she has to make which she knows are wrong. She can buy four packets of biscuits for £2 or one bag of oranges for the same price. "You have to think about what will fill her up - even though I know the food is crap."

Life often boils down to a case of "heat or eat" - would she rather be cold or hungry? "The government makes me feel as if I am lower-class or one of the undeserving poor," she adds. "I don't want my daughter to grow up with such a stigma."

Smith's also aware of the changes poverty has wrought on her life. Before, when she worked, she couldn't have told you the price of anything. Today, she knows exactly what any given item costs. She has to. When you have to budget to buy sanitary towels, you've got to know exactly how much money is in your purse, right down to the very last penny.