Meeting of the Parliament 23 April 2014
I welcome the opportunity to open, on behalf of the Labour Party, this afternoon’s debate on the living wage, because it is an important debate that is not about independence. It is about something that this Parliament can do on the living wage right now by taking positive action through the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Bill. As was stated when the bill was debated in Parliament at stage 1, it covers £10 billion-worth of public contracts. Agreement to Labour’s demand for the living wage to apply to all those public contracts would make a real difference now.