Members' Business: Social Enterprises Working to Tackle Child Poverty

That the Parliament congratulates the Glasgow-based social enterprise, ApparelXchange, which aims to promote reuse and recycling of school uniforms to reduce costs to families and prevent the waste of resources; notes that the social enterprise worked with a number of schools to run a successful series of summer pop-up shops across Glasgow offering reused items of school uniform; recognises that many families struggle to meet the costs of school uniforms, which it understands amount to an average of £130 per year; commends the team for diverting over 2,100 garments from disposal in landfill, which it understands made carbon savings equivalent to four return flights from Edinburgh to New York; considers that UK Government welfare policies have increased the number of children living in poverty; values the work done by the Child Poverty Action Group and others on the costs of the school day; considers that child poverty has a deeply damaging effect on young people’s education and life chances, and recognises both the valuable contribution that social enterprises make to tackling child poverty and the need for all levels of government to act positively to eliminate it.