Meeting of the Parliament 06 September 2023
The Deputy First Minister well knows that, budget after budget, the Scottish Labour Party has brought to the chamber proposals on how we can accelerate to £12 an hour and £15 an hour. The former finance secretary said that £12 an hour could not be done and consistently refused to engage on those points.
We have long supported efforts to improve childcare. Of course, we support the actions outlined to move forward the work of Baroness Kennedy’s review of misogyny law and support women and families who have experienced baby loss across Scotland. We have heard very powerful contributions across the chamber in that regard.
However, let us be honest: the relaunch of Humza Yousaf’s Government, which is already tired after just six months, is underwhelming. Just 24 hours after the statement, it has been met with a lukewarm response at best from anti-poverty organisations, the third sector and wider civic Scotland. It has been described as “a timid step” in addressing injustice by Save the Children. The Poverty Alliance said that it missed a crucial
“opportunity to turn our shared values of justice and compassion into meaningful action”,
and it fails to meet the challenges described by Shelter Scotland.
The challenges before us are great. We face twin crises: the cost of living and an NHS on its knees. The response to those crises must match the scale of the challenge. Continuity won’t cut it, as someone famously said. However, continuity from the First Minister is exactly what we got.
The reality does not match the rhetoric. Instead of direct action and new interventions, we have a document that is full of pilots, proposals, exploratory work and steering groups, and many of those initiatives are just reannouncements.
The Government’s flagship policy of removing income thresholds for best start payments is a reannouncement of existing policy, and it will do little for those in the deepest poverty. No new spending has been announced on the child payment; the SNP Government is expecting credit for maintaining the status quo.
On the annual recycled pledge on free school meals, that is now delayed until 2026, and it will begin with a limited roll-out. How many times will the Government promise and then not deliver?
It is clear that this is a tired continuity Government that lacks direction. The reality is that the SNP Government is failing and is out of ideas on how to turn the situation in Scotland around. There are clarion calls around Scotland that the Government is going to fail to meet its own statutory poverty targets.