Meeting of the Parliament 25 January 2023
I think that the period of time between now and when the housing bill is introduced is exactly why emergency legislation was brought forward. It is a shame that the Conservatives would not support that interim measure, which we know is already supporting people to stay in the houses that they have.
We must be clear that the biggest drivers of poverty today—housing costs and food costs—are linked to inflation, which has been caused by reckless UK Government decisions. My constituents are paying the price—and it is a steep one—for preposterous levels of Tory economic mismanagement. Inflation is eating up the Scottish Government’s budget and the budgets of households across the country, no matter how well off they were just a year ago.
With the best will in the world, that cannot be entirely undone by a devolved Government, especially one that is up against an increasingly litigious Whitehall that stands ready to knock back legislation that it does not like. We are all getting used to that, and it seems almost normal but, if we take a step back, we realise that it is a ridiculous concept that we are making progressive decisions here, such as those on the rent freeze, the new deal for tenants and anti-poverty measures that include the Scottish child payment, within a financial context that has been set by a right-wing Tory Government elsewhere, whose ideas Scotland has overwhelmingly voted down over and over again. It is a nonsense. At this point, the UK looks like a rejected idea for a political dystopian novel.
Everything that we do comes with a “but”. Here in Scotland, the average first-time buyer spends around £100,000 less for a property than is the case in England, but mortgage rates rose substantially after the UK Government’s mini-budget last year. The Scottish Government is tackling poverty through the Scottish child payment, the welfare fund and more, but the UK Tories insist on a five-week wait for universal credit, more sanctions than ever before, a benefit cap and a penalty for being under 25.
The Scottish Government is introducing duties to prevent homelessness, but UK Government decisions keep pushing folk towards it by making life more expensive and poverty harder to avoid.