Meeting of the Parliament 16 September 2021 (Hybrid)
I recognise that. However, 125,000 children who should get the under-16 payments are not getting those bridging payments because they are paid only to people who get free school meals. There are 125,00 children out there who should be getting the money but are not getting it.
It is a great privilege to lead the debate for Scottish Labour. The debate is entitled “A Land of Opportunity”, which is what all of us in the Scottish Parliament want Scotland to be—a place where, no matter who you are, who you love, or where you were born, you can live up to your full potential. Sadly, for too many people, we are not there yet. As we sit here today, 1 million of our fellow citizens are living in poverty, and 260,000 of them are children. We are set to miss the child poverty targets that we as a Parliament set without caveat.
Half of the families living in poverty have a disabled person in them. Disabled people in Scotland are twice as likely not to be in education or employment when they leave school. The disability pay gap remains at 8.3 per cent. Tens of thousands of disabled people live in homes that they cannot get in and out of. Disabled people do not have the care that they need and are underrepresented everywhere from the high street to the boardroom. The fact that six in 10 people who died from Covid-19 were disabled shows the disproportionate impact that the pandemic has had, as well as the chasms that existed in society before it.
Things are not equal for women, either. Women are more likely to be in poverty, more likely to experience in-work poverty and find it harder to escape poverty than men. Women’s work in sectors such as care, cleaning, hospitality and retail has long been undervalued, underpaid and underprotected. The pandemic has meant that women are doing more unpaid labour and are being forced to carry out more unpaid caring responsibilities, childcare and housework than ever before. It is estimated that a collective £15 million of income has been lost each day in Scotland as a result of the work that many women have had no choice but to take on.
LGBT+ equality is nowhere near where it needs to be in Scotland. Stonewall research found that almost a quarter of LGBT people have witnessed discrimination and negative remarks against them by healthcare staff, and a startling 37 per cent of trans people avoid healthcare as result. It also found that 6 per cent of trans employees have been physically attacked by customers or colleagues, and that only half of LGBT staff agree that equalities policies in their workplace protect trans people.
I think I am explaining clearly why people in the groups that I have highlighted so far cannot see Scotland as a land of opportunity right now.