Hansard

The minister failed to answer the question that I put to her. I share with her that unemployment in Scotland today, at 5.9 per cent, is higher than the UK average, which is 5.5 per cent. The difference might seem small in percentage terms, but it represents thousands of people.

The proportion of people in poverty who work has risen considerably under the Scottish National Party. More than half of working-age adults in poverty are in working households. In Scotland today, the real-terms drop in income has been accompanied by structural shifts in the labour market that have increased people’s insecurity. The number of workers who earn less than the living wage and who are on zero-hours contracts has increased; the number of those who work part time, because they cannot get the full-time hours that they need, has increased; and the number of those who are in self-employment and temporary employment has increased since 2011.

The SNP Government recognises the problem of inequality, which I absolutely welcome, but it is that recognition that makes its response so inadequate. Earlier this year, the Scottish Government published an analysis of inequality in our country. Here is the stark reality of what it told us. The wealthiest 10 per cent of households own 44 per cent of the wealth. The wealthiest 2 per cent of households alone own 17 per cent of all personal wealth. In contrast, the least wealthy half of households in Scotland own a mere 9 per cent of total wealth.

In that context, I am genuinely confused as to why the SNP blocks opportunities for progress such as extending the living wage through public procurement. A Government that continues to fail to build an economy for all or dedicate its full resources to tackling inequalities should step aside for one that will work every day to secure the jobs of the future for all Scots. We need action, not the trickle-down approach to which the SNP Government—a Government that is committed to cutting tax on corporations and air travel for the few—repeatedly returns.

The pressure that families across our nation face goes beyond those statistics. Even when people work full time, it is harder than it should be to get ahead. That is not just a hangover from the financial crisis. Scotland’s economy will not fulfil its potential until we change course on the stagnation of working people’s jobs and incomes. We must measure our success by something more than our GDP or a Government press release on jobs figures. We must measure whether we are creating meaningful work that gives a sense of purpose, pays a wage and provides a family with security. When working families do not have money to spend, it is harder for our economy to grow, which is why a winner-takes-all system means that our economy cannot truly succeed. That is the central challenge of our times. Every policy that the Government pursues should be aimed at answering that challenge.

We believe that we should work towards jobs for all that are secured in the industries of the future. Building the jobs of the future requires world-class training today. Just as the internet opened the door to new areas of economic activity, new technology will transform how we work in the future. We would welcome a renewed focus from the Scottish Government on connectivity and building a digital economy. In particular, the rapidly growing sharing economy offers a new dynamism that we should ensure serves to empower individuals.

I know that, in that spirit of sharing, those on the Government benches will welcome the appointment of Joseph Stiglitz as an economic adviser to the Labour Party. Members will be familiar with the professor’s conclusion that equal access to education is a solution to tackle inequality. Our economy needs every one of our people to be successful, so this Scottish Government should follow Stiglitz’s advice, as the next Labour Government will.

Education is the single most important investment that we can make in our future. It is our young people, and the schools, colleges and universities that educate them, who will shape the Scottish economy well into the 21st century. How well we do today in ending the attainment gap will set the conditions for working people in the future. I hope that we can unite on that across the chamber.

We have seen huge cuts to colleges, which have cut off the chance at learning that so many need and deprived our employers of the skilled workforce of the future. There are 140,000 fewer students, 93,000 of whom would have been women.

In school, the least deprived pupils are twice as likely to gain one or more highers than their most deprived peers. We need to invest in the classroom to support basic literacy and numeracy. We should all be ashamed that the attainment gap in reading is 12 per cent, in writing it is 21 per cent and in maths it is 24 per cent; and that 6,000 kids are still leaving primary school unable to read properly.

Scottish Labour has committed to use the new tax powers that are being devolved through the Smith process to deliver a 50p top rate of tax to invest in education. The SNP has voted against that. It chooses instead to maintain a Tory tax cut at the expense of children’s education. I hope that that changes.

A Labour Government would take action so that companies such as Starbucks and Amazon pay their fair share of taxes. It speaks very much to the choices made by the SNP Government that a company such as Amazon, which failed to pay a fair share of tax, received more than £10 million in regional selective assistance grants and other public support from Scottish taxpayers. It should hang its head in shame.

We have an SNP Government that has failed to deliver for working people and has been blinded to transforming our economy by an on-going constitutional distraction. It is time for the Scottish Government to take action. Let me offer it some thoughts. Let us bring forward a new industrial strategy that focuses not only on the hi-tech sectors but on supporting those sectors that are big employers, such as retail and social care, so that they can win a race to the top and not get dragged into a race to the bottom. Let us refocus on inward investment, so that the number of jobs that it supports increases, rather than what happened this year, when the number fell. In addition, preparations should be under way to devolve the working programme to local areas, so that we match support back to work with local circumstances.

As an outward-looking nation, Scotland can prosper from free and fair trade. Alongside those opportunities, there is a potential slowdown in the world economy, and the corresponding risk of contagion to our economy is no longer confined to the eurozone but extends to a Chinese slowdown. Both those realities make it all the more important that action is taken now.

My party feels frustration when we hear people say that having a woman in power is an inspiration, as if that by itself is enough to transform the lives of young women in Scotland, because action, not just words, is the Labour way. [Interruption.] SNP members may laugh, but theirs is the party that is good at talking and big on rhetoric but rubbish at taking action.

Although it is not everyone’s bedtime reading, let me remind members what our 1945 manifesto said. [Interruption.] I think that those on the Government front bench should listen. It said:

“It is very easy to set out a list of aims. What matters is whether it is backed up by a genuine workmanlike plan conceived without regard to sectional vested interests and carried through.”

Young women are told in this country, “If you are good enough and work hard enough, you can achieve anything,” but that just is not true in Scotland today. It ignores the barriers to succeeding that woman face in our society, whether that is about access to science and technology skills, about tackling the gendered violence that one in four women will face or about the motherhood penalty, where women lose positions or promotions for simply going on maternity leave.

That brings me to the Government’s record on jobs, particularly for women. Again, those on the front bench seem more interested in talking to each other than listening. The culture of low-paid, low-skilled work is the feature of this SNP Government’s record. The lowest-paid jobs are in the hospitality, retail and care sectors, where women disproportionately work. Those are exactly the sectors that have seen growth since the SNP took power. Around six in 10 of the new jobs over this session are in low-paid sectors—in other words, 42,000 out of the 73,000 total additional jobs are in low-paid sectors

It would benefit the public debate and the lives of women across Scotland if the Government championed high-skilled, well-paid jobs for women and then took the action to make that a reality. Future releases from the Scottish Government should make good on that change. Targets should be not just about headline employment but about secure employment in the jobs of the future, particularly for women trapped in low pay and insecure work.

A job for all—that should be our ambition. When people have decent wages and feel secure at work, they can spend more, and that creates jobs, too. That is what will build a modern, prosperous economy. It should be the central mission that guides the full efforts of our Government, based on the fact that when working families prosper, Scotland prospers, too.

I move,

That the Parliament believes that the Scottish Government must ensure that the benefits of economic growth improve the lives of working people and reduce inequalities; believes that the Scottish Government must be more ambitious to improve employment and economic performance; notes with concern that Scotland’s Economic Strategy provides no targets to measure success; notes that the employment rate in Scotland remains 0.9% below pre-recession levels; recognises that, since 2008, the proportion of people in Scotland in full time jobs has fallen, while the proportion of people working part time has increased, along with underemployment; notes that the proportion of those in in-work poverty is increasing; believes that the Work Programme should in future be devolved to give local authorities the ability to find local solutions to get people back to work; welcomes progress in promoting the living wage in the private sector, but believes that the full weight of the Scottish Government should be behind this effort, including through procurement, and believes that the foundation of Scotland’s economic strategy must be a successful education policy and that, therefore, tackling educational inequality must not only be a political priority but also a spending priority.