End the two-child benefit cap once and for all - Lorna Slater

It is among the cruellest and most shameful legacies of 14 years of Tory rule. It has hurt and humiliated parents all over our country and has plunged hundreds of thousands of children and their families into totally avoidable poverty.

None of this was unknown to the ministers who made the decision. On the contrary they were warned time and time again by experts, campaign groups and charities, but they decided to ignore them.

The new prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, spent the election campaign claiming that it would be too costly to remove, but that completely ignores the damage it is doing and the huge social costs that come from poverty. Children in extreme poverty are far more likely to experience poor health, trauma and isolation.

There are very simple steps we can take that can make a difference straight away. We have been able to deliver some of those in Scotland with the limited powers of devolution and the limited budget available to us.

One of the proudest legacies of the time that the Scottish Greens were in government in Scotland was the decision to more than double the Scottish Child Payment.

Now worth over £100 a month for every eligible child, it has been praised by Danny Dorling of Oxford University for shifting Scotland from being one of the most unequal places to live in Europe for a child to being one of the most equal within its first 12 months.

We built on this with free bus travel for everyone under 22, which has already helped over 85,000 young people across our city and hugely cut the cost of travel.

There is no equivalent of these policies anywhere else in the UK, but they are reflective of the sort of ambitious change that the new government must seize the opportunity to make.

It may not always seem like it, but the UK is one of the wealthiest societies there has ever been at any time in history. There is no need for any child to go to bed cold or hungry. There is more than enough money to stop such injustice, but we need to put it in the hands of people who need it.

Keir Starmer will rarely be in as powerful a position as he is now. Tepid managerialism and continuity is not enough. The new prime minister must live up to the urgency of the time by using that power to end the two-child cap once and for all and working to build the kind of fairer, greener future that so many people badly need.