Meeting of the Parliament 06 February 2024
All too often, poor mental health and debt go hand in hand and lead to absolutely disastrous social consequences, both for the people who are immediately affected and for wider society. The need to legislate in that area is therefore clear. That is why Scottish Labour is broadly supportive of the bill and will support its general principles at stage 1.
However, it is important to note that we have concerns about the mechanisms by which people will trigger a mental health moratorium, the threshold at which it may be obtained and the protections that are afforded to those who choose it.
Overall, however, and perhaps more important, I have concerns about the approach that the Government has taken in the bill. It is legislating for an approach, but leaving the detail on all the matters that I have just mentioned to be set out in secondary legislation, thereby denying us the possibility of scrutinising that detail in the chamber today. That is problematic.
Nevertheless, the bill addresses an important area, because we know that poor mental health goes hand in hand with money problems; that is self-evident. We know that people who have mental health problems are three and a half times more likely to be in debt. That can lead to a cascading situation in which one, in turn, impacts the other, leaving our society, and families, devastated along the way. That is all the more so, given that we are in the middle of a cost of living crisis, in which family bills are going up and up and those pressures are mounting.
That is why we welcome the intent in the provisions as they are set out in the bill. Those provisions are important. However, I raise a question about the mechanisms. By definition, the people whom we are talking about lack capacity and are in the deepest of mental health crises, as set out in the policy memorandum and by the mental health moratorium working group. We have to ask ourselves whether those people actually have the capacity or even the physical means to use those mechanisms.