Hansard

I thank the Presiding Officer and the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body for their good offices in again making the Parliament an exemplar in the provision of access to people who are deaf and who use British Sign Language. In that respect, we are carrying on the good work from the previous parliamentary session.

We support the publication of “A Fairer Scotland for Disabled People” and the five key ambitions. We feel that they reflect some of the commitments to disabled people that we made during the election campaign, which included promises to enhance their ability and freedom to work or to set up a business; to enable them to get more involved in civic life; to ensure that they could access justice, in particular when they were victims of hate crime; and to make sure that public services—in particular, education, the national health service and transport—were truly accessible.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has just released a report that shows that although Scotland has the lowest rate of poverty in the UK, a massive 960,000 people still live below the poverty line. The report provides shocking detail on the poverty that disabled people face. In particular, 26 per cent of people in poverty in Scotland are disabled, which is the second-highest rate in the UK after the north-east of England. The foundation said that, across the UK,

“modern poverty is also increasingly linked with disability.”

As a result of the higher costs of being disabled, half of people in poverty are disabled or are living with a disabled person in their household.

The Learning Disability Alliance Scotland built on that assessment. It said that 39 per cent of people in poverty live in a household with at least one disabled person and that the costs that are associated with disability average at around £550 per month. A key thrust and ambition of the delivery plan is to provide decent incomes and fairer working lives, and we absolutely support that.

In November, it was announced that the Scottish Government would not take control of welfare powers, including those on disability benefits, until 2020. Those powers will give us the chance to restore dignity and respect to the heart of the social security system. During that time, the Tories will continue to make their savage cuts and the most vulnerable will continue to suffer.

In a letter to the Social Security Committee, the cabinet secretary said:

“For so long as executive competence remains reserved, the UK Government has the ability to administer the existing benefits and to adjust the detail of their delivery.”

At the moment, the UK Government is moving disabled people from disability living allowance to personal independence payments, which, according to research by Sheffield Hallam University, will lead to Scots losing—collectively—£190 million a year. In last month’s social security debate, we revealed that up to 150,000 disabled people in Scotland who are currently on DLA remain at risk of going through the new PIP assessment process. As long as those powers stay with Westminster, we cannot stop PIP reassessments taking place and we cannot meet the calls of the stop PIP campaign.

During last month’s debate, Alison Johnstone called on the Scottish Government to ask the UK Government to halt reassessments in Scotland, and we support that call to protect up to 150,000 DLA recipients. Ministers should use their next meeting with the joint ministerial working group or their meetings with Department for Work and Pensions ministers to make that call.

Until those powers are devolved and changes are made, the Tories will continue to make their cuts and the most vulnerable will continue to suffer. Rightly, expectation is building again that we will make different choices to alleviate that suffering, given the challenges that disabled people are still facing and that campaigners are fighting against every day. Those campaigners will watch closely how we approach the new powers. There is an expectation of a system for not just those directly affected by the powers but the country as a whole that does not tie disabled people up in red tape; that preserves people’s independence and provides not just a safety net to allow them to survive but a springboard to playing a full part in society; and that moves us beyond the idea of social protection. That is a social security system that many people in Scotland just cannot wait for.

I said earlier that one of our priorities for disabled people was to ensure that they can access justice, in particular when they are a victim of hate crime. One in five people in Scotland lives with a disability, but they also often live with prejudice and discrimination. The disability delivery plan is a good start and one that we support, but the Scottish Government must now deliver on its promises and build on them to cut through the discrimination that people with a disability face. Since 2010, hate crime towards disabled people has trebled: it is up by 319 per cent in six years. The legislation for the newer categories of hate crime came into force on 24 March 2010. That legislation was promoted by Patrick Harvie and gained cross-party support when it was introduced.

Disability Alliance Scotland is calling for the Scottish Government to fund a significant national campaign to raise awareness of disability and reduce stigma and discrimination that includes education, training and the necessary evaluation. Last month, the Parliament debated a motion on preventing and eradicating hate crime and prejudice and agreed an amendment to it that proposed

“a zero-tolerance approach to hate crime across Scotland”.

That provides a good opportunity to commit to action today. I welcome what the minister said in her opening speech about committing to the necessary awareness-raising campaign to tackle stigma and discrimination.

We support the Government’s ambitions for a fairer Scotland for disabled people and simply ask members to recognise that the new Scottish social security system will be a vital tool to ensure that disabled people have independence, decent incomes and fairer working lives.

I move amendment S5M-02948.1, to insert at end:

“; recognises that the new Scottish social security system will be a vital tool to ensure that disabled people have independence, decent incomes and fairer working lives; further recognises that two fifths of people in poverty live in a household with at least one disabled person and that the costs associated with a disability can average £550 per month, and agrees that new disability benefits powers will give the Parliament and the Scottish Government both the substantial responsibility and opportunity to support Scotland’s disabled people by halting and reversing the worst effects of Tory social security cuts, under a system that is based on the principles of dignity and respect.”