Hansard

I am pleased to speak in this important Scottish Government debate on achieving a fairer Scotland. As the MSP for the Cowdenbeath constituency, I say at the outset that it is absolutely unacceptable that children in my constituency are growing up in poverty, losing out on opportunities and do not have the life chances that other children take for granted. That shames me, and it should shame every single member of this Parliament—but shame is not enough: we must identify the structural issues that are at play and sort them out.

It could not be clearer that the key issue that faces people in my constituency, and people right across Scotland, is the lack of power to make a generational difference to people who are in poverty, because without power we cannot deliver the changes that we need, and without power we lack the tools that we need to fix the scandal of poverty in energy-rich Scotland. Of course, the power that I am talking about is the power of a normal independent country: the power to control all of our resources, the power to decide how our resources are spent, and the power to determine our own priorities, based on the needs of our people.

That also includes the power to have the Government that we actually vote for. For far too long, Scotland has been in an invidious position in that regard. Aside from any other considerations, that, in and of itself, evidences the stark fact that the union is simply not working. The appalling statistics that have been mentioned are a sad indictment of life under the union, with successive Tory and Labour Governments failing the people of Scotland and failing generations of children in Scotland.

Of course, that has in recent years been exacerbated by Tory austerity and welfare cuts, which have left families across Scotland struggling to pay their bills and feed their children. We know from analysis that was published last year that UK Government cuts will result in some £3.7 billion being cut from the social security spending in Scotland by 2021. We know, too, that the benefit cap is affecting more than 3,000 households, which are losing on average more than £3,000 a year. We know that 8,500 Scottish families have already seen their income being cut due to the universal credit two-child limit, and we know that about 5,600 couples in Scotland could lose up to £7,000 a year by 2023-24 as a result of the Tories’ changes to personal credit, news of which was slipped out by way of a written ministerial statement. What cowardice. Of course, we have also seen the hardship that has been caused by the flawed roll-out of universal credit, which has resulted in significant increases in recourse to food banks.

This is the Britain of the poorhouse. The situation is so bad that the UN special rapporteur reported that UK Government welfare cuts are

“punitive, mean-spirited and often callous”.

As the cabinet secretary said in her opening remarks, the rapporteur went on to say that the cuts are unnecessarily inflicting “great misery.”

However, in what is, indeed,

“a tale of two Governments”,

we in Scotland have seen the SNP Scottish Government taking strong and decisive action in the face of such cuts, by using the powers that we have to help to tackle poverty and income inequality, and to build a fairer and more prosperous Scotland. For example, as we have heard, there is the Scottish child payment, which is worth £10 a week per child. The first payments will be paid out for under-six-year-olds by Christmas 2020, on an accelerated timescale. I congratulate the Cabinet Secretary for Social Security and Older People for ensuring that that will happen. At its heart, the payment is designed to shift the curve of poverty fundamentally, and has been described by the Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland as a

“game changer for child poverty in Scotland.”

I entirely agree with that description.

Just imagine if the Scottish Government had 100 per cent of the powers over the social security spend, rather than just 15 per cent, which I regret is the case at the moment—a situation that Labour and the Tories supported during the work of the Smith commission.

Another example of decisive action from the Scottish Government is the difference that the best start grant is making to families in Scotland. Furthermore, we can point to free school meals for children in primaries 1 to 3, which Labour voted against; to help with school uniforms; to the carers supplement, which Pauline McNeill referred to; and to free prescriptions. Those are all examples of the Scottish Government doing what it can with the powers that it has.

However, here’s the rub: at the same time as we see that much-needed investment by the Scottish Government to support low-income households, we also see some £100 million having to be spent every year on mitigating the worst impacts of UK Government’s welfare policy. That is money that, therefore, cannot be spent elsewhere. Indeed, as the UN special rapporteur concluded,

“mitigation comes at a price, and it is not sustainable.”

Westminster rule has come at a very high price for Scotland, and it is “not sustainable”. What kind of country wants to spend £200 billion on nuclear submarine replacement when we see so many people struggling to get by? What kind of country has, under successive Labour and Tory Westminster Governments, seen disabled people being treated so shabbily, with individuals having consistently to go through a long and arduous appeal process to get the benefits to which they are entitled in the first place? And what kind of country is content to preside over generations of children losing out on equitable chances in life?

Scotland has been too long in this condition. The Westminster system is failing Scotland, and the only way to secure real social justice in our country, and to unlock the potential of current and future generations, is to be a normal independent country.