Hansard

The motion rightly notes that, by 2020, around £3.7 billion of social security spending will be cut from Scotland as a result of UK welfare reforms. The international day of disabled persons took place yesterday, so it is timely and important to highlight how hard those cuts have hit disabled people. Colleagues have raised that important issue.

A report by the disability benefits consortium that was released this year shows that disabled people have lost benefit payments of around £1,200 on average each year. For a household with one disabled adult and one disabled child, the average loss is over £4,300. No wonder that the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights and the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities have raised concerns about the impact of welfare reforms on the fundamental rights of disabled people.

Disabled people are forced to travel huge distances to undertake wholly unnecessary benefits assessments that are overturned on appeal more than two thirds of the time; in some cases, they are not able to, or are no longer able to, work because their Motability vehicles have been taken away from them. That is the legacy that the Scottish Government inherits as it takes on responsibility for some disability benefits.

To build a fairer Scotland, we have a lot to combat and we need to radically use the powers that we now have, as small as those powers are and as frustrated as some of us might be about that. The significant change of direction in the use of assessments, in line with the legal requirements that were instituted by the Greens, is potentially a sea change. It should mean that we get more accurate decisions on benefit assessment, which would avoid putting people through assessments that often simply recreate evidence that was already there. We also need to look at the levels of support that we offer and at how broad the eligibility criteria are.

The current disability benefit for older people—attendance allowance—does not offer support for mobility, despite that being available for young people, and I am concerned that the Scottish Government plans to replicate that unfairness. The 20m rule was a cynical attempt to reduce spending at the expense of people’s needs, and it must end. I welcome the Scottish Government’s openness to ending that rule, and I hope that that will result in more disabled people getting the support that they need.

As will many others, those changes will require a significant reinvestment in social security, and that investment will need to be funded to a significant extent by higher taxes. That is why it is so important that we continue to make our tax system more progressive, raising funds from those who can afford to pay a bit more.

Income tax is fairer in Scotland as a result of the budget changes that were won by Greens, so we now need to rise to the challenge on local taxation that was laid down by Naomi Eisenstadt in “Shifting the Curve: A Report to the First Minister”. In that report, which was written almost four years ago, Professor Eisenstadt said that we had reached

“a central moment of political decision, an opportunity to introduce a much more progressive system, one that will have important implications, particularly for working households at or just above the poverty line”

and yet the council tax is still with us. It is still outdated. Most households are still paying the wrong amount and it still restricts the ability of local authorities to better fund public services, to reduce poverty and to build fairer communities.

That is why I lodged an amendment to today’s motion that underlines the importance of the cross-party talks on council tax reform, which I hope will result in the replacement of council tax with a progressive alternative that is urgently needed. Like rebuilding our social security system, introducing a fairer system of local taxation is a huge challenge, which I do not underestimate. However, the Parliament must rise to that challenge if we are to build a fairer Scotland.

My amendment mentions the need to review the Scottish welfare fund to ensure that it is able to support those who have been impacted by welfare reforms and other people who need urgent help with their income or to live independent lives. The welfare fund offers vital support to people who are suffering income crises, which are often brought on by the welfare reforms. I pay tribute to the local government officials across the country who help people in very difficult circumstances. Some 95 per cent of crisis grants are processed within the target time of two working days. That figure has improved over the lifetime of the fund, which reflects the dedication and hard work of those who process welfare fund applications. Now that the fund has been operating for a good few years, at a time of seemingly never-ending welfare reform, this is an appropriate moment to review the fund to ensure that it is able to help everyone who needs it.

The underspends that marked the early years of the programme are now largely a thing of the past in most areas, and the majority of local authorities spend around their full Scottish Government allocation, or indeed overspend it and provide additional funding themselves.

This year, a Menu for Change report showed that some local authorities do not always advertise their welfare fund or its availability, because they are concerned that they will have more applications than they are able to handle. If that is the case, it is clear that we need to urgently review the level of support that the Government is providing. For those reasons, I would appreciate the support of members across the chamber for my amendment.

I wish to address the motion’s focus on rising food bank use. We should be deeply concerned that the Trussell Trust has warned that the use of food banks in Scotland is at an all-time high, with 210,605 food parcels having been issued over the past year, a third of them to children. It is important to remember that food bank statistics do not reveal the true depth of the problem. About a third of food banks are not included in the most commonly used Trussell Trust statistics, and many people who are struggling to pay for food do not always use food banks.

I am over my time, so I will close for now and address more issues in my summing-up speech.

I move amendment S5M-20110.2, to insert at end:

“; calls for a review of the Scottish Welfare Fund to ensure that it can support those hardest hit by welfare reform; notes that the original report, Shifting the Curve, recommended that the Scottish Government should be ‘bold on local tax reform’, and believes it is imperative that ongoing cross-party talks on council tax reform result in a progressive local tax that will enable local authorities to better fund local services and promote fairness.”