Meeting of the Parliament 25 April 2017
Last Thursday, together with Kezia Dugdale, Willie Rennie, Patrick Harvie and many MSPs from across the chamber, I attended the demonstration against the rape clause that took place outside this building. At that demonstration, Sandy Brindley of Rape Crisis Scotland said that opposition to the rape clause is not about party politics; it is about basic human rights. I agree very much with that.
Of course, the rape clause has come about because of the two-child cap that was introduced three weeks ago by the United Kingdom Government. The cap means that child tax credits and universal credit will be paid only for two children in each family. I will talk about the rape clause in due course, but it is worth noting that the policy intention of the changes—not an inadvertent consequence but the intention behind them—is to reduce the income of low-wage families with children. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has set out the stark reality of that: 600,000 households across the UK will be £2,500 a year worse off, and another 300,000 households—those with four or more children—will be, on average, £7,000 a year worse off.
The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport today received a letter from the Department for Work and Pensions, which says that the reform is to ensure that people on benefits have to make the same choices as those who are supporting themselves through work. That really misses the point that around two thirds of the families who will be affected by the policy are working households. They are people who are already participating in the labour market but on low incomes. The UK Government therefore seems to be directly targeting the people it claims to want to help.
It is also important to know that the changes are part of a much bigger picture. In total, by 2022, approximately £1 billion a year will have been cut from social security spending in Scotland, only a fifth of which will have been the result of the changes that took effect this month. For the past seven years, the Westminster Government has systematically reduced vital social security safety nets—for example, by freezing the work allowance, cutting support for housing and cutting the income of people with disabilities.
Let me reflect on some of the consequences that those decisions have had. Sick and disabled people have seen their incomes reduced by around £30 a week due to cuts in employment and support allowance. Every week, right now, around 800 motability vehicles are being removed from disabled people across the UK as a result of changes to personal independence payments—a fact that makes Ruth Davidson’s decision yesterday to pose for photographs sitting on a mobility scooter all the more insulting to every disabled person who has lost that resource.
Young people aged 18 to 21 have also had their financial help with housing costs removed, and bereavement payments and the widowed parents allowance have been cut. More than 70,000 households in Scotland would, but for our action, have been hit by the bedroom tax, and more than 80 per cent of those households have at least one adult who is disabled. That is one reason why the United Nations has described the UK Government’s welfare cuts as “discriminatory” and “systematic violations” of disabled people’s rights. How shocking is that? The United Nations has described the attack on disabled people’s benefits as “systematic violations” of their rights.
Inevitably, those cuts disproportionately affect families on low incomes—those who most need support and assistance. There is overwhelming evidence that they also disproportionately affect women. As the women’s budget group has noted, five sixths of the cuts that the UK Government is making to social security and tax credits will come from women’s incomes. It is worth repeating that. Five sixths of the impact of the cuts is being borne by women. Surely no Government with a genuine concern for those who just about manage and the women who often have the responsibility of holding those households together could ever have chosen to reduce the deficit in that way.
The two-child cap on tax credits is, therefore, in some senses unsurprising although deeply regrettable.