Meeting of the Parliament 04 December 2019
That is a classic example of what the SNP Government and its back benchers do. They look at the statistics on education and then ignore them. They say that experts, parents and teachers are wrong and that they know best.
I developed the theme of education because it is key to moving people out of poverty. Mr Swinney dropped the proposed education bill. The First Minister said that we should judge her Government on its education record. In the past 10 years, it has failed dismally. Until we get movement with regard to that, the Government will continue to fail. My colleague Alison Harris will talk about what is happening with children at a younger age.
Given that education is a failure, let us look at employability and disability. The Government has failed on that as well. Yesterday evening, we had a members’ business debate in which we had lots of warm words from the minister. However, let us look at what the statistics say. In Scotland, 45.4 per cent of people who are disabled are in employment. The figure in England is 51 per cent. That is a substantial gap in respect of people who are disabled and looking for employment in Scotland. There has been a lack of vision and policies from this Government to take those with disabilities out of poverty, give them fresh opportunities and allow them to develop. We are letting down individuals in our society who want to work but are not getting the opportunities to do so.
I was interested to hear the cabinet secretary talk about benefits. She was brave to do that. This Scottish Government’s record is, “Give us the power and then we will hand it back to the Department for Work and Pensions quicker than you can say any word in the English language.” It does not want the powers that it has been given; it is handing them back. The previous cabinet secretary, Jeane Freeman, made a commitment in the chamber—and on numerous occasions in the Social Security Committee—that all the powers would be fully up and running before the 2021 election. Now we hear from the current cabinet secretary that that will not be the case—another broken promise from the Government.