Hansard

It is a privilege to be here and to represent the Edinburgh and Lothians East region. I thank everyone who cast their vote for us in the election, as well as all the incredible activists and supporters who helped by knocking on doors, posting leaflets, putting up posters and sharing gen Z green memes that I mostly did not understand.

I am proud of our campaign. It was a campaign that, as Iris Duane mentioned, ran on the energy of hope rather than hate, in which we stood together in solidarity with those most marginalised by the current system and fought together for a fairer, greener and more just future for Scotland. I am excited to carry that energy into Parliament with me.

I also thank Alison Johnstone, my predecessor on the Lothians list, who has been an inspiring Presiding Officer for the past five years and who has left an incredible green legacy as an MSP.

I realise that some members might already be aware of me as the newly elected MSP with some rather radical ideas about the world, so perhaps some folk feel a little trepidatious about me. That is okay—I do not expect everyone here to agree with my world view. In fact, I welcome difficult conversations that will help us to make progress through some complex topics about which, perhaps, none of us alone has the answer.

What I hope, and what I believe to be possible, is that we can find areas where we can work together to improve the lives of people in Scotland and to bring care, collaboration and kindness to the heart of this Parliament. If there is one area where that work is most urgently needed, it is this—addressing wealth inequality through a fair taxation system and properly funding our public services. That has to be central to what we do together over the next five years.

The vast majority of us in this chamber were elected on manifestos that promised to reduce poverty and inequality. That simply cannot be done without sharing wealth more fairly and asking people who have too much to share more with those who have too little—and the public agree. Research by Wellbeing Economy Alliance Scotland shows that the vast majority of people in Scotland want the wealthy to pay more tax, not less.

As others have mentioned, Scotland’s wealth inequality is huge. The top 10 wealthiest individuals and families in Scotland are worth more than £23 billion combined, which is more than the total amount raised by Scottish income tax in a single year. That is not a natural state of affairs; it is a political choice and it has to change. Some political parties are keen to blame migrants for Scotland’s problems, but it is the presence of billionaires, not migrants and refugees, that shows us that something is wrong with our economy. If some of us have enough money to hoard houses and yachts while others are struggling to feed our families or heat our homes, that is a sign of failure, not success.

I, too, welcome the progress that has been made towards a private jet tax and a mansion tax, but we need to be bolder and braver and make the absolute most of our revenue-raising powers in Scotland. It took 18 years for us to use our income tax powers; we cannot afford to be so slow again. We need to urgently consider an Amazon tax to support local businesses, and to scrap the outdated and aggressive council tax in favour of a fairer alternative. In Edinburgh, the Greens were laughed out of the room when we first advocated a tax on hotel rooms, but we did not give up. The tourist tax that is coming into force this summer in Edinburgh will raise around £90 million over three years, and that will allow us to improve our arts spaces and green spaces and provide more housing support during the housing crisis.

My background is in working in equalities and human rights in Scotland. I have worked with communities that often experience multiple overlapping inequalities and oppressions, almost always exacerbated by wealth inequality and inadequate service provision. I know how much it would mean for us to be able to start properly addressing some of those inequalities and funding inclusive, high-quality public services.

I have also spent much of my career working on similar issues with communities and civil society groups in other areas of the world, particularly in countries such as Yemen, Egypt and Palestine, and I believe that Scotland should be playing a role in addressing global wealth inequality, too. We should be engaging in conversations on global tax justice and debt cancellation, reparations for colonial harm, and feminist economic models that centre on care and wellbeing rather than extraction.

I look forward to the next five years and to working across parties to build wealth in our communities without extracting it from workers or our natural world and to build a fairer and greener society. I hope that together, in the words of Angela Davis, we can

“act as if it were possible to radically transform the world.”

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