Meeting of the Parliament 16 September 2021 (Hybrid)
Bob Doris will be aware that I am on the record supporting an extension of that payment. I note that the Scottish Government’s motion does not include any mention of the issue. What is on the table, though, is my amendment calling for doubling of the Scottish child payment within this financial year. Will the member support my amendment this evening? He seems to have lost his voice on the issue. I respectfully suggest to SNP and Green members that they, too, get their houses in order when they come to the chamber to ask questions of Opposition members.
One of the areas in which I believe urgent action is needed is the long-term impact that lockdown has had on children’s learning, which we heard about during education questions. Long-term system-wide support is required if every child is to catch up and recover from the educational disruption that we have seen during the pandemic, which has had an impact on child development across Scotland. We know that prior to the pandemic SNP ministers were failing to close the educational attainment gap; indeed, the Audit Scotland report that was published in March this year exposed the lack of progress in closing the poverty-related attainment gap.
That is why Scottish Conservatives want the Scottish Government to focus more on prioritising young people’s education with delivery of additional support for catch-up schemes for disadvantaged children and young people.
It is also important to consider the skills and training opportunities that are available for young people to find work in key growth sectors. The loss of more than 100,000 college training places under the SNP Government has clearly impacted on the number of opportunities that are available for young people. Making sure that young people in Scotland who are not in training or education have opportunities to access schemes and apprenticeships, for example, is critical and is something that we all need to work to make happen.
I want to take this opportunity, as I did in Tuesday’s debate on health and social care, to specifically thank and highlight the contribution that is being made by unpaid carers, especially young carers, during the pandemic. The pandemic has significantly increased the number of unpaid carers across our country. Research in June 2020 showed that 392,000 more people had become unpaid carers, taking the total to more than 1.1 million of our fellow Scots now taking on caring for a family member.
It is estimated that 45,000 young people across Scotland are now carers. Undertaking a caring role is a key factor that contributes to poverty. Whether someone is a paid carer or an unpaid carer, they are more likely to live in poverty as a result. Given the importance of care to people and our society, and the invaluable contribution that unpaid carers make, that cannot be right.
The pandemic has exposed the extent to which our NHS and social care services rely on unpaid carers. Scottish Conservatives welcome the doubling of the carers allowance supplement, and we want more progress in support for Scotland’s carers, especially our young carers.
Scottish Conservatives support early action to extend payments for carers after a bereavement and we support a new support package for carers, who often have to give up work to care for a loved one. We also want there to be help to access training, and more mental health support.
I hope that ministers will work with the Scottish Conservatives to seriously consider as soon as possible reforms to the young carers grant and reforms to entitlement, in order to allow younger carers to qualify for the carers allowance supplement.
For care-experienced young Scots, we need to ensure that the Government retains a real focus on improving access to services, transition and care. The recommendations of the independent care review were widely supported across Parliament, but we have seen little progress from ministers on implementing that promise, or a national minimum allowance for foster carers, as was previously committed to and as is in place in other parts of the UK. My colleague Meghan Gallacher will outline more on that important issue later. Care-experienced young people expect the promises that have been made by ministers to be kept and action to be taken to implement the recommendations of the review.
I turn to the critical issue of housing and homelessness. The number of children in temporary accommodation reached the highest level on record before the pandemic. At the end of March 2020, there were 7,280 children living in temporary accommodation due to homelessness. That is the highest number since records began in 2002 and represents a 7 per cent increase on the previous year. In the year leading up to the pandemic, someone was made homeless in Scotland every 17 minutes. We know that the number of people and families in temporary accommodation has increased over the course of the pandemic.