Hansard

Green politics begins with a recognition that the ecological and social crises that we face both stem from the same broken economic system, so the Green Party’s choice of topics for debate seek to reflect that balance.

We propose a motion on wealth and pay inequality at a time of increasing global debate about the subject. Over recent years, those debates have been informed by “The Spirit Level”, which was written by Wilkinson and Pickett; by the work of the First Minister’s favourite Nobel laureate, Joseph Stiglitz; and by the more recent work of Thomas Piketty.

In Scotland, the work of organisations such as Oxfam, the Carnegie UK Trust, the Jimmy Reid Foundation and the Scottish Trades Union Congress has also helped to develop the idea of an economy in which not just how much economic growth is generated but how fairly that is shared is measured. Just this week, we have seen work from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, as well as research published by the Sunday Herald at the weekend, that further the debate in the Scottish context.

It is going to be difficult to have the debate without the referendum context creeping in. Members on both sides of the referendum debate will have their own views: some will say that the Scottish Government can and must do more now, whereas others will say that we need the full powers of independence. The motion deliberately does not seek to get into that. Members on all sides know the Green position and why I will be voting yes, but in this debate our purpose is to seek agreement on the objective goal of reducing inequality in wealth and income so that, no matter which decision the Scottish people make, none of us can walk away from that agreement.

Neither the Labour amendment nor the Scottish National Party amendment seeks to remove most of the commitments in the motion on progressive and redistributive taxation, on decent wages instead of subsidised poverty pay and on the need to address high pay as well as low pay. I am glad that neither of the two large parties is seeking to remove those commitments.

The debate on inequality very often focuses on safety-net policies, such as benefits and the minimum and living wages. Let us recognise that safety nets can all too easily develop holes. The creation of a legal minimum wage was a really important step; the advancement of a living wage is a better one. However, employers will find ways to exploit people by using tactics such as zero-hours contracts or the outsourcing of low-wage work to other companies to allow them to claim the public credit for paying the living wage to their direct employees while exploiting the labour of people in poverty. Even this Parliament has been in that position, despite the political will of the majority of its members.

The welfare system is supposed to be another safety net, but it is time to recognise just what the UK’s welfare state has become. It not only allows poverty to continue but takes people who are already living with the stress of that poverty and heaps further stress on them. The system can be demeaning, humiliating and patronising, and all too often it seems to have been designed that way.

That attitude goes deeper than specific measures such as the vicious bedroom tax that we have already discussed this afternoon—it is also about values. For years now, divisive rhetoric such as “benefit cheats”, “scroungers v strivers” and that old favourite “hard-working families” has been used by political and media voices alike to undermine the human empathy that a welfare state depends on and to present the false notion that there are those who contribute and those who only take. The reality is that every single one of us depends on a successful welfare state and, apart from the hoarders and tax dodgers among the super-rich, we all contribute as well. As a result, this debate is not just about whether the welfare system is run by an independent Scotland, a devolved Scottish Government or the United Kingdom Government, but about the urgent need to win again, from first principles, the argument for a welfare state and a society in which we are looked after and in which everyone’s dignity matters.

We need more than just a safety-net agenda; after all, we cannot close the gap between rich and poor without addressing both sides of it—high pay as well as low pay. That said, pay levels matter not just at the top and the bottom but across the whole population. We remain, by European Union standards, a very low-wage economy, with half of working Scots earning less than £21,000 a year, and progressive taxation has to be part of the picture in relation to income and wealth taxes.

We also need to examine the structure of the economy. Especially in the period of low growth that many expect over the coming years and perhaps decades, the risk is that wages stagnate while investment by the richest continues to pay back for them. If that happens, wealth will continue to accumulate in the hands of those who are already the wealthiest and we will never achieve the fairer, more equal, healthier and happier society that we should be seeking. Moreover, if we do not close the gap between rich and poor, we will not achieve the political consent needed for a welfare system that deserves the name—in other words, one that is focused on human welfare instead of one that bullies people into low-wage work.