SCOTTISH Labour leader Anas Sarwar has told the SNP and Conservatives to stop their squabbling over independence and “obsess in the next parliament about challenging child poverty”.

Mr Sarwar made the call as Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross launched his party’s Holyrood election manifesto.

The Scottish Labour leader visited a baby bank in Glasgow, with organisers highlighting a rise in demand for their services amid the pandemic.

Mr Sarwar has pleaded for independence arguments to be halted and instead, a collective effort to eradicate child poverty brought forward by the next class of MSPs.

READ MORE: Scottish Tories mention SNP more than themselves in manifesto

He said: “We have one in four children in Scotland living in poverty. In some parts of Glasgow, that’s as much as one in two children living in poverty.

“That’s due to both SNP and Tory failures.”

Mr Sarwar added: “Child poverty is going to rise, unemployment is going to rise coming through this pandemic unless we take some urgent and emergency action. 

“It’s clear from both the SNP and the Tory manifestos that they lack the big ideas in terms of confronting those challenges. 

“They want to tinker around the edges, they want to nudge and make bold promises for what might happen in the next 10 years.  

“We need bold commitments in the next five years and actually deliver on then so we can come through this as a stronger and fairer nation.” 

Mr Sarwar warned that bot the SNP and Conservatives are "focused on division, focused on their own priorities, focused on taking us back to the old arguments" but are "not focused on putting the issues that matter to the Scottish people front and centre".

He added: “That's why we want to focus on a national recovery that puts challenging child poverty at its heart and that’s where we want our obsession to be in the next parliament.

“I want us to obsess in the next parliament about challenging child poverty – I don’t want us to obsess about the old arguments. I want us to obsess in the next parliament about a national recovery, not going back to the old arguments.”

Mr Sarwar also accused Mr Ross’s hardline opposition to independence as playing into the SNP’s hands.

READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon insists the SNP's election manifesto is designed to "unite Scotland"

He said: “Douglas Ross’s entire election campaign strategy is to talk to a hardcore about the issue of independence, to talk up division, to talk up disunity and in some ways help Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP because of the way they frame the contest.

“All that helps is the politics of division. They are making no effort to move Scotland away from division – they want us to live in division because it suits them politically – both the SNP and Tories.

“It just seems Douglas is stuck in those old arguments because he has nothing else to say.”