Child poverty statistics released recently showed it is rising in Scotland with one in four children and one in five adults are now living in poverty.

This is simply unacceptable in one of the world’s wealthiest countries. The reality is that poverty isn’t restricted to the most deprived communities as there are pockets of intense child poverty in the most affluent areas in Scotland.

That is why universal provision of poverty-tackling measures are extremely important in reaching all living in poverty.

Poverty is not an inevitability – there are means to combat and reduce poverty if the political will exists. Only Labour has the ambition and political will to be radical and bold in tackling poverty and injustice.

One of the measures we have tried to introduce in the Scottish Parliament was to use the powers of the parliament to top-up child benefit and immediately lift 30,000 children out of poverty. However, this was blocked by the SNP and Tory alliance. With one million people in Scotland living in poverty, we cannot afford to be weak and timid.

Housing costs are attributed to the levels of poverty in Scotland. An estimated 43 per cent of children living in the private rented sector are living in poverty and for children living in council homes, there is a slight fall in the rate to 39 per cent.

These statistics show that we need to tackle high rents in the private rented sector and build more social homes for rent that are affordable and built to reduce fuel costs.

It is no secret that welfare changes are a major cause for poverty in Scotland. What the Tories have pursued since 2010 is a punitive welfare system that strips benefits from people and forces many into low-paid, zero-hours contracts jobs. That has resulted in the number of people working, yet living in poverty, increasing.

Only a Labour government in the UK and in Scotland will tackle poverty, as the last Labour government did between 1997 and 2010. Under Blair and Brown, we halved child poverty and dramatically reduced pensioner poverty by introducing a welfare system that looks after our most needy and by ensuring that work pays with the national minimum wage.

Under a UK Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn and a Scottish Government led by Richard Leonard, I know we can go further and change our economy to work for everyone, not the few.