IN this column exactly two years ago I wrote of how poverty in the UK was not only an injustice and social calamity but also a political choice made by the UK Tory government.

Glaswegians, already living with the impacts of generational poor health and deprivation, have had to endure a decade of ideologically driven austerity topped up with brutal welfare reform and the failed Universal Credit.

The impact of Covid-19 has created an additional burden and means that far too many of our families are experiencing unprecedented hardships. The looming Winter Holiday period is also likely to be the most challenging time financially.

In these circumstances, it’s essential that we in Glasgow, and indeed all of Scotland, make our own choices with the limited powers we have available to us. And it will be welcomed by thousands of hard-pressed families in our city that we’re doing just that.

Following the announcement in October that the Scottish Government was making funds available for councils to provide free school meals over the Christmas and spring breaks, this week Glasgow families with children on free school meals will start receiving fresh financial support.

We will be paying £120 per child into the bank accounts of more than 26,000 city families with children from P1 to S6. Funds will be transferred between Friday and December 21 and then again in February to cover the cost of free school meals during the spring break.

Our officers have been working with schools to identify all those eligible families from all year groups, including those who currently haven’t applied for the free school meal grant but can access the support available.

We know that this payment will help our families when they need it the most and it was hugely encouraging to see First Minister Nicola Sturgeon also announce an additional £100 for low-income families in the run-up to Christmas.

As the First Minister said, families will know best what they will need the assistance for. It may be to ensure their children don’t go hungry over Christmas, that they don’t go wanting for new shoes or coats or that it could be used to help heat their homes. That is for them to decide.

But we have decided, at a city and Scottish level, to make the political choice to provide practical support to those who need it most, when they need it most.

And that was so much of the theme of the SNP party conference which took place over the weekend. I was particularly delighted to see Deputy First Minister John Swinney commit to free school breakfasts and lunches for all primary pupils, including during school holidays, if re-elected next May.

In Glasgow, the SNP City Government has already extended free school meals to pupils in P4 and committed the funds to make the physical expansions to school dining areas that are needed to accommodate pupils receiving free meals in primaries 5 to 7. So our primary schools will be ready to hit the ground running to provide a free meal for every child who wants one.

We’ve also been working to address holiday hunger for the past three years. We knew that for thousands of families, school holidays have too often meant financial stress, hunger and even malnourishment, while teachers told us that more and more children were returning from school holidays suffering from poor nutrition.

So we have led from the front, resourcing our Children’s Holiday Food Programme where youngsters can access activities and free meals delivered by our partners in communities across the city. It’s been a real success story and we anticipate it returning for the spring break.

Glasgow has already started the journey of ensuring that no child in our city goes hungry and Mr Swinney’s pledge will help us complete that journey. It’s a huge commitment to the families and children of Scotland. With Covid-19 having an increasingly negative effect on our economy, hitting jobs and living standards hard, and with Brexit soon to push many more families further to the brink, this is exactly the type of practical commitment we need right now.

And that was my takeaway from conference. We spend so much of our resources here in Glasgow and in Scotland warding off the punishing excesses of UK Government policy. Within just a couple of months we’ll be the only part of the UK giving low-income families an extra £10-a-week for every child in our fight against child poverty.

But we’re being forced to run just to stand still. Even at a national level we have extremely limited levers and resources to mitigate the excesses of Tory policies that are entirely at odds with the needs of our citizens. Every year the Scottish Government spends around half a billion pounds mitigating Westminster austerity. And that also means there’s less to spend on other policies we know can improve the lives of Glaswegians.

It’s no good our opponents repeatedly bleating on that the SNP Government has an obsession with independence, while at the same time they remain doggedly faithful to political masters who are determined to reverse Scotland’s progress and who care not a jot about Glasgow. The SNP City Government does have an obsession – with making better lives, better places and better opportunities, with protecting our citizens against poverty and inequality, and with putting in place the policies that reflect our values and the kind of country we want to build. This weekend was another reminder of the kind of Scotland we can and will achieve.