Hansard

I am not a member of the Social Security Committee, but I thank it for its work in preparing the report. Despite what the Tories claim, there is no doubt that the impact of the changes to the benefit system and in particular the roll-out of universal credit has brought hardship to a number of households in the country. The UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights has advised that the roll-out has had a bigger impact on women.

As we have heard, in-work poverty is on the increase, which is just not acceptable. Nearly 60 per cent of those who use food banks came from households with at least one person in work. The StepChange Debt Charity, which recently held an information event in Parliament, has reported that, UK wide, in 2018, 55 per cent of new clients were in employment. Its report entitled “Scotland in the Red: The latest debt statistics from StepChange Debt Charity Scotland” gives us more information about what is happening, and estimates that more than 700,000 people in this country are in, or at risk of, problem debt. Such debt is primarily a symptom of poverty, poor housing conditions, welfare cuts, ill health and insecure work and cannot be addressed by simply advising that people should learn how to budget. No matter how skilful they might be, it is not possible for them to create a budget out of nothing—which is often what they have left at the end of the week.

As the Child Poverty Action Group pointed out in its very helpful briefing paper for the debate, 65 per cent of children who were assessed as living in poverty over the past three years did so in households where at least one adult was in work—a point that was also made by Mark Griffin in his speech. That is taken from the Scottish Government’s own analysis of poverty and income inequality, and it really is shameful.

Tory austerity is certainly to blame for much of the poverty in this country, but if we are to be serious about developing policies and interventions that reverse that trend, the Scottish Parliament must also take some responsibility. It is not good enough to pass it all on to the UK Parliament or to place the blame solely on the aspects of the social security system that are reserved to Westminster. The committee’s report draws attention to a number of steps that the Scottish Government could take to improve people’s lives here and now. I would like to focus on those.

As I said in the chamber before the Easter recess—and as Alison Johnstone said in her speech today—the refusal to consider an immediate uplift in child benefit while more and more families struggle to put food on the table seems to be indefensible. We still do not seem to have clear progress on the proposed income supplement, other than a letter to the committee that assures it that a report will come in June. I ask the minister, when responding to the debate, to let members know how the income supplement will take account of the reality of today’s flexible labour market. We need to have answers to such questions.

Payment of the living wage is not a requirement for recipients of many public sector contracts, but it should be. The Scottish Government’s national standard for early learning and childcare providers requires that the staff who deliver the childcare receive the living wage. However, as was highlighted by Audit Scotland and by a Scottish Parliament research paper this month, that applies only to the hours that a staff member works on ELC funded places. Therefore, the same staff member could have two rates of pay for different times of day. Furthermore, the requirement does not apply to all staff in a nursery or day care facility. There is nothing in a publicly funded contract that provides for the living wage as a minimum for cleaning staff, janitors or other support workers. That is only one example—there are many more.

In today’s Scotland, we can do something about wage levels and contracts. Decent, well-paid and secure employment is needed to ensure that standards of living rise and that in-work poverty falls. Employment statistics deserve far closer examination if we are to understand fully the reality of what is happening in people’s lives.

I turn to the Scottish welfare fund, which was mentioned by Clare Adamson in the speech prior to mine, and which is another resource over which the Scottish Government has control. Community care grants and crisis grants are administered at local authority level. However, in some areas they are difficult to apply for because of lengthy and intrusive forms and questions, which I urge the Government to look at. The committee has asked that such grants be increased. I certainly support that call, but I must also ask what is being done to ensure that there is no underspend in the fund, and that payments from it reach all those who need them. Last year, there was an underspend of £2.3 million in the Scottish welfare fund, and we know that, during that time, food bank use continued to rise.

Eligibility criteria for payments from the fund include the requirement that households have low incomes, whether or not they receive benefits or include children. In fact, 54 per cent of the households that were assisted by the Scottish welfare fund over the past five years were single-person households, which might indicate a level of need that requires specific policy intervention. The Scottish Government might want to pick up on that point.

The most common Scottish welfare fund crisis grant expenditure, as reported up to September 2018, was for food, essential heating expenses and other living expenses. There are crisis grants for recipients who are in work. We should all have a basic right to food, yet paying for it accounts for 60 per cent of crisis grant expenditure. Basically, we are a society that is failing to feed everyone, and that has got to change.

I commend the committee’s recommendations to the Parliament and I again thank the committee, everyone who gave evidence and the clerks for the report, but I also urge the Government and the Parliament to do far more with the powers that are at our disposal, to change direction and to reverse the growing gap between rich and poor in our society. We really cannot afford not to address child poverty right now.