Hansard

I am grateful for the opportunity to close the debate on behalf of the Scottish Labour Party. Social security has been a bit of a focus of mine while I have been in the Parliament, and I want to thank members of the Welfare Reform Committee—past and present—as well as the clerks to the committee, spokespeople and ministers and their predecessors.

An issue in which I was involved early on was the Parliament’s approach to the imposition of the bedroom tax on our communities. I was grateful to the many policy experts and campaigners who came to the committee to discuss the range of options. Willie Rennie was absolutely right to talk about the involvement of such people in the next stage of developing a social security system in Scotland. There is a huge amount of expertise outside the Parliament.

A key point that the cabinet secretary made was that as new powers come to this Parliament we can move on from simply mitigating the effect of the bedroom tax to abolishing it altogether. I very much welcome the cabinet secretary’s comments; he will have our full support on that.

The responsibility on members of the Scottish Parliament in future will be to design and implement a new and distinctive social security system in Scotland, in many areas in which the focus, in the past, has been on complaints about decisions and systems that were made and designed elsewhere.

I was struck by a comment that Bill Scott, of Inclusion Scotland, made last year. He said that the system should stop treating claimants as suspected criminals. Many members will have seen reports at the weekend that some 85 per cent of the fraud allegations that members of the public have made, which have been eagerly solicited by the UK Government, have proven to be entirely unwarranted.

Alex Neil was right to say that social security should be regarded not as a system of handouts but as a basis for addressing need in our society. We should all be clear that we have a stake in a system of social security. We have a responsibility to pay in when we can; we also have a right to receive support when we need it. Christina McKelvie was right to put social security in a rights context. The system must take account of our circumstances and the varying ability that we all have at different times in our lives, given the particular barriers to employment—ill health, old age, disability and so on—that people face.

John Lamont made the fair point that the social security system interacts with many powers that this Parliament has, such as powers to do with housing, education and job creation—the list could go on. Devolution of new powers therefore cannot be seen in isolation from other areas of policy, and the Labour Party argues that it cannot be seen in isolation from the financial powers that are coming to the Scottish Parliament.

Social security is becoming a shared competence. We will share common standards across the UK, and we will gain flexibility to adjust the system in a range of areas, to suit need and reflect the policy choices that are made in this Parliament. The challenge for the next parliamentary session will be to make the new system work in a way that improves the lives of the people on whose behalf this Parliament has been vocal in complaining in the past.

Many of the issues will be tested during the upcoming election campaign. I wish members who are standing as candidates well. I hope that they will give priority to this agenda and be honest about the choices that we face as a society in the context of the benefits system—Dr Murray talked about that. She also talked about the options appraisal for the governance of the new system, which the Government has kindly published, and we endorse the view that social security should be a public function accountable to Scottish ministers and to this Parliament. We cannot outsource our responsibility and ambition for a fairer Scotland to a department or agency that is accountable elsewhere. Neither, given our experience of private sector delivery, would it be appropriate for a new system to be contracted out to those who might seek to make profit from the poor circumstances of many of our citizens.

The focus of the Labour amendment has been on child poverty. In addition, we have agreements with the Scottish Government about raising support for carers and abolishing the bedroom tax, which we have already mentioned, but we want a Scotland where the wealth of their parents is not the defining feature in the life chances of our youngest citizens. That is why we have indicated another area in which we will seek to use the new powers by increasing the sure start maternity grant—a payment introduced by the previous Labour Government and which we remain committed to using to assist low-income parents expecting their first child.

I mentioned my hope that candidates in the election will be honest about the choices available to us. Hanzala Malik was right to say that there is a risk that the devolution of significant social security powers could create an expectation that Scotland’s politicians fail to deliver upon. It is therefore vital that all parties are honest, both about where our priorities lie and about whether we are prepared to pay for our priorities and for a fairer Scotland. Labour is committed to using not just the welfare powers that we have argued for but the financial powers that we support for this Parliament. Since 1999, parties have had the ability to propose raising revenue, but with enhancement to the devolution settlement those powers become more and more flexible.

Hugh Henry made the outstanding contribution of the afternoon. He was right to say that the choice has now become whether or not to make change or only to complain about what we do not like. The Scottish Labour Party chooses change. We choose to make Scotland fairer by action, not just words, and we are proud to do so. I therefore support the amendment in the name of my colleague Neil Findlay, and I encourage other members to do likewise at decision time.