Our country should be judged by how we value our children. The great Nelson Mandela said, “the true character of society is revealed in how it treats children”.

I am totally appalled by comments the Tories made to give pathetic excuses for not extending free school meals for children from low income households.

The SNP government have already announced a £10million package to extend the provision of free school meals over the holidays.

It made me so angry to hear a Tory government minister dismiss the proposal saying that “kids have been going hungry for ages”.

The new Tory leader abstained on supporting the extension and his five MPs voted against.

This ideology has no place in a compassionate country like Scotland. Instead of holding children back we should do everything possible to see them thrive. We must recognise that our country’s future will be defined by the support and positive environment we provide for children today.

The SNP government have put a range of measures in place to tackle poverty and see our children supported. As part of this we have introduced the Scottish child payment of £10 a week that experts have described as a game changer in the efforts to tackle child poverty. We rejected the campaign the Labour Party were supporting that proposed that this payment should only be £5, because we knew this was not enough.

We have also used the welfare powers we have to provide support to low income families, for example increasing the child element in council tax reduction entitlements by 25 per cent, and providing best start grants for pregnancy and baby payments, early learning and school age children.

So, the SNP are doing everything possible to see our children get a strong platform to flourish. Everyone knows though that Universal Credit, reserved to Westminster, is causing significant hardship for families. Recent research from the foodbank charity the Trussell Trust revealed that the longer Universal Credit has been in place in an area the more reliance there is on foodbanks. I can testify to this from my work with local volunteers and this has been exacerbated by Covid-19.

The inconvenient truth for some opposition politicians is that Scotland does not have the welfare, financial and structural powers to fully tackle these issues. The desire to provide a compassionate, just and resolute society can only be fully achieved by securing an independent Scotland.