Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 25 February 2021
I am glad that Mr Arthur has finally come round to that view. I have been arguing all my time in the Parliament that resources have to go to the communities in most need. It is just a shame that the Government has not been listening.
The way for the Government to show that it cares is by committing real, hard cash. It is not by imposing a 1 per cent pay increase, as the Government has done in the NHS, but by paying a minimum of £15 an hour in the health and social care sector.
Last week, we saw pictures of 200 people queuing up in the snow for charitable food. That shocked many people, but it should not have shocked people. That is not new, and it does not happen just in Glasgow. Every night, I pass a food van parked at the rear entrance to Waverley station that feeds queues of hungry people. Across every region, community projects are doing similar heroic work.
That is a scandal that is off the scale. A few weeks ago, I wrote to all the party leaders to call for cross-party talks to see whether we could come together to end hunger in Scotland. I received replies from Jackie Baillie and Andy Wightman, but not a word from anyone else. Are we not all ashamed to live in a country that cannot provide its citizens with food, which is the most basic human need? I am certainly ashamed of that.
What about housing? We had a housing crisis long before Covid. This week, we heard that Scotland has three times the level of deaths among homeless people compared with England. What is the Government’s cunning plan to deal with that? It is to cut the affordable housing budget by £100 million. More than half of those homeless people who have died were drug users. The Government announced an extra £50 million out of the social housing budget, which would have helped to house the very same people. It is all just a game to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance but, in the real world, on the street, people are dying.
We see the Government, which was going to scrap the unfair council tax, going back to a freeze that will deliver a massive 1 penny a month for the lowest-income households, but £30 a month for the highest earning.
Those are deliberate political decisions that dismiss the poor and the low paid because they are less inclined to vote, and reward the middle class, which does vote.
I have no doubt that the cabinet secretary will trot out her well-rehearsed lines about where the money will come from if we want to do other things. The Government pours money down the drain as if there is no tomorrow.
Let me tell her where the money will come from. It will come from the same place as the £100 million to pay off the maliciously prosecuted Rangers liquidators; the £100 million extra to pay for ferries; and the £650 million to pay for delayed discharge over five years. It can come from there, or from the £16 million that was paid for remedial work to the sick kids hospital; the £1.4 million a month in charges for the same hospital, which has not yet treated a patient; the £50 million of remedial work at the Queen Elizabeth hospital; the £1 million of taxpayers’ money that was spent on the Alex Salmond case; the salary and expenses of the cabinet secretary’s predecessor, who never turns up for his work; or the £54,000 to coach civil servants to answer questions at an inquiry. That is where the money will come from. I would rather it was spent on putting something in the mouths of hungry people and putting a roof over their heads than have the cabinet secretary and the Government pour more money down the drain.
The money is there. What is not there is the political will.
15:55