INDEPENDENCE and control over Scotland's resources offer the best hope for eradicating child poverty, and enshrining the rights of young people in a written constitution would help the process, the Deputy First Minister said.
Nicola Sturgeon, addressing the End Child Poverty Coalition at the National Museum of Scotland, said the opportunity to address the current growth in the problem was one of the "big prizes" of independence.
She highlighted the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, saying this could be incorporated into a future written constitution to force policymakers of the future to put the rights of young people at the heart of decision-making.
She argued that without control over the country's resources, and lacking the levers that would come with independence, a No vote would mean a continuation of the current trajectory of pushing 50,000 more youngsters into poverty by 2020.
Ms Sturgeon said: "It will take time, of course, and no- one is suggesting it will be easy but the solutions will lie in our own hands. And when the alternative is, at best, more of the same from a system that has failed for generations, how can we pass up the opportunity?"
Scottish Labour's Drew Smith MSP said: "Ms Sturgeon says she wants to eradicate child poverty, but her government's record on this has been one of failure."
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