Hansard

I wish outgoing members who are delivering their last speeches all the very best. I also thank the Labour Party for giving us the opportunity to debate the Covid recovery. The motion in Monica Lennon’s name seeks to address key points that the Scottish Government should adopt.

The Scottish Fiscal Commission forecasts that Scotland’s economy will not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2024 at the earliest. Societal inequalities exposed by the pandemic have been exacerbated, and we must ensure that the next Government that is elected to Scotland addresses them with a strong recovery and support plan.

Scotland’s other Government has delivered billions to the Scottish budget to support the most vulnerable, as well as an extension to furlough until the end of September. In her new role, Monica Lennon will no doubt welcome two further grants for the self-employed. I am grateful to the chancellor for responding to Scottish Conservative calls for an extension to the £20 uplift to universal credit for another six months so that the most vulnerable in our society receive support.

I want to highlight three groups of people who are negatively impacted by the pandemic: women, young people and people with disabilities.

We must prioritise the disability employment gap as part of the recovery. The latest annual statistics show that, in Scotland, the difference in employment rates stands at a staggering 35.5 per cent, with 81.1 per cent of non-disabled people employed compared with 45.6 per cent of disabled people. That will have changed during the past 12 months, given the pandemic. People living with disabilities have been adversely affected by Covid. A United Kingdom survey of 6,000 people by Citizens Advice found that disabled people were at twice the risk of redundancy as non-disabled employees, with one in four disabled people surveyed facing redundancy. Inclusion Scotland’s chief executive officer, Sally Wither, highlighted that and said:

“The Covid-19 crisis and responses to it highlighted this, aggravating existing inequalities and generating new ones, and putting the human rights of disabled people at further risk.”

That leads me on to the fair start Scotland scheme. The SNP was lagging behind in helping people who were already unemployed before the pandemic. The scheme has been slow off the mark to help people who are in greatest need of employment, including those with health conditions, single parents and those with caring responsibilities or who have additional needs or disabilities.

The £96 million flagship SNP scheme has failed nine out of 10 people. Statistics show that only one fifth of people managed to stay in the job for 13 weeks, while 40 per cent of those referred did not even start on the programme.

For many young people, it has been difficult leaving school or higher education to go into a world where jobs are few and far between. In fact, the number of young people claiming unemployment-related benefits across the UK increased by 122 per cent between March and July last year.

Thanks to UK Government intervention schemes that are available to young people, such as the kick-start scheme, we can see some green shoots. Furthermore, the Scottish Conservatives highlighted the need for a laser-like focus on ensuring that young people reach positive destinations, with apprenticeships and an education guarantee to age 19. With those measures and a fair start scheme and a young person’s guarantee that actually delivered, there could be far more opportunities for young people.

The Covid pandemic has had a disproportionate effect on women, from employment to financial security. As was mentioned in Gillian Martin’s recent members’ business debate, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has estimated that women are a third more likely to be employed in sectors that were shut down in the first national lockdown and women are at higher risk of job losses. Of course, job losses also have an impact on children. To our shame, almost a quarter of children in Scotland live in poverty. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Scottish Government will miss its child poverty targets.

I welcome Monica Lennon’s comments on the impact on women, but, under the Labour UK Government—we have to be honest here—there was a 25 per cent increase in unemployment among women. It took the Conservative Government to reduce the UK’s gender pay gap from 27.5 per cent to 17.3 per cent in 2019. It was not a Labour Government that did that.

As we emerge from the pandemic, we must see strong economic growth and more opportunities for young women to start apprenticeships or retrain for the jobs of the future in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The Scottish Conservatives want to see job security councils set up to work with employers to develop recovery strategies for jobs.

Presiding Officer, I am sure that I have run out of time. I urge members to support the Conservative amendment tonight so that we can ensure that we can work for a recovery together.