How do you solve a problem like poverty?

Firstly we don't need a poverty strategy, we need an economic strategy that works for the people of Scotland, not just for business. Secondly, we need a change of attitude that recognises we live in a society not an economy.

We are never going to solve the issues of poverty and inequality unless we change our economic model to one that works for people and for business.

I can hear my friends in the private sector already saying: "How naive. That doesn't create jobs or grow businesses." I disagree. The fact is that our current economic model - the one that's left us with marginal growth rates and that isn't creating significant numbers of jobs - has failed. This means we now have as many poor children living in families with employed parents as unemployed parents. By the time we reach 2018, even middle-income earners are likely to have a standard of living below what they had in 2008. The richer are getting richer in this model and everyone else is being left behind. I believe in growing our economy. Getting a decent job is still the best way out of poverty but what our politicians, policy-makers and economists tend to forget is that this isn’t an experiment. Economic strategy shouldn’t be an experiment in growing the economy. We need a solution that considers people, their happiness and their jobs. The lesson here is any that future Scottish Government needs to recognise that our economic model is failing the Scottish people. The key question is: How do we create an economic system that works for the many, not the few? Until we ask that, it is more of the same old. But where in the referendum debate are ideas about which economic model Scotland should be adopting? What are we going to do about our continuing marginal growth rates? How can we create jobs? I’m not seeing any ideas from any of the political parties or the campaigns about how to revive our declining economy. How can we make the economy work better? How can we protect people from future downturns or even prevent them from happening at all? That’s what they should be debating. They have nothing to say on the wellbeing agenda, building on the likes of Oxfam’s Humankind Index, or using Joseph Stiglitz’s work, despite him being economic adviser to the Scottish Government. There’s little mention of the strength of our natural capital or our people either. The very simple answer is worth repeating - we are never going to solve the issues of endemic poverty and inequality unless we change our economic model to one that works for people and for business. We've launched Scotland's Outlook campaign to fight poverty in Scotland. Scotland's outlook is poor, but you can help change it.