Meeting of the Parliament 13 January 2016
I welcome the new member before she leaves the chamber. We look forward to debating with her in the next 10 weeks or so.
There was very little that I disagree with in Alex Rowley’s speech. Like him, I came into politics driven not by a need to be a minister or to be driven about in a Government car but by the need to create and maintain full employment in our society.
I came into politics in 1966—I know that that is hard to believe; I was just out of nappies then—when Harold Wilson was the Prime Minister. In those days, we had full employment. The level of poverty was genuinely at a historic low in absolute and relative terms.
However, ever since the July measures of 1966—for the past 50 years—the position has been going downhill. It started with Harold Wilson and went on with him again and with Jim Callaghan, Ted Heath and all the rest of it.
The fundamental point of principle that Alex Rowley put forward is absolutely right. The best and only way to solve the problems of poverty and inequality is through full employment, not just in the sense that everybody who is fit and able to work has a job but in the sense that they have a good, well-paid job. We share that ambition with Alex Rowley.
That is why so much of the Government’s emphasis, since the day we were elected in 2007, has been on putting economic growth and sustainability at the top of the agenda. It is noticeable in the gross domestic product figures that were announced this morning that against the odds—with the difficulties in the oil industry and the austerity policies that we face coming from London—we can still grow the Scottish economy. The reason why we can still grow it is that we have deliberately targeted a massive increase in capital investment in Scotland, so that we can create and maintain the good jobs that we have.
Let us take housing, for example. The fact of life is that, in comparison with the first eight years of the Parliament, our housing record in the past nine years has been outstanding. We are building about 5,000 council houses, compared with the six that were built in the last year of the previous Administration. If we look at the total number of houses completed, we see that we have exceeded the 30,000 figure, and we will build at least another 50,000 over the next five years.
Housing is important not just because of the need for it, which we totally agree has to be a top priority for this Parliament and for the next Government as well as this Government, but because, as we know, good, decent housing is a prerequisite for reducing and eliminating poverty, and it is essential for achieving educational attainment and improving the nation’s health. Housing ticks every box in terms of being good policy, which is why we have set aside more than £3 billion over the next five years to build at least 50,000 new affordable houses.