Meeting of the Parliament 08 January 2014
The improvements in the employment and economic positions and the signs of economic recovery outlined by the cabinet secretary are very welcome. He wisely described them as “relatively positive”, because to understand the fragility of the economic position we have to look behind the headline figures, welcome as they might be, at the reality of the recovery for many Scots and their families.
The truth is that almost 75,000 more Scots are unemployed than when the cabinet secretary took office. There is a long way to go yet. It is true, too, that too many of the jobs that have been created are insecure, temporary, part-time, zero-hours contracts or simply poorly paid. There are around 250,000 underemployed workers in Scotland, which is about 10 per cent of the workforce, which is an increase of 76,000 since 2008. Those are Scots who are in work but without enough work or enough of a wage to meet their families’ needs, far less their aspirations.
Meanwhile, recent analysis has shown that the proportion of the Scottish workforce earning less than the living wage has steadily increased since 2000; 820,000 Scots are stuck in low pay. Across the piece, the workforce has seen wages fall in real terms in every single month since 2010, with the exception of one.
When we welcome the signs of recovery, therefore, many Scots will be left puzzled because, in insecure, underpaid jobs, with wages buying less every month, it hardly feels like a recovery to them. We know that an economy built on insecure, low-paid, low-skilled jobs is not a sustainable 21st century economy. The Government’s motion implies that it understands that but it also implies—and the cabinet secretary reiterated this—that as a devolved Government it can do little to address that. That is not true. The cabinet secretary and I agree that Government spending is a key lever to stimulate the economy. I certainly agree with him when he says that the UK Government has failed to use those levers as it should have done.
However, Government spending in Scotland is still billions of pounds a year. There is spending on capital projects, but there are also contracts for goods and services and support for economic development. The Government could do much more to ensure that that spending underpins high-quality, properly paid employment. All Government contracts should support jobs that pay the living wage, insist on the creation of local employment opportunities, create training and apprenticeship places and avoid exploitative zero-hours contracts.