Meeting of the Parliament 08 October 2024
I need to make some headway. I do not have much time.
Throughout those 25 years, successive Labour and SNP Governments have pledged to tackle poverty. Mr Swinney regularly tells us that he will eradicate—that is the word that he uses—child poverty. However, throughout the quarter of a century of devolution, the poverty dial has barely shifted.
We need to spend more time talking about the relationship between social security and entrenched levels of poverty. The Scottish Fiscal Commission has said that annual social security spend is set to increase to about £8 billion by 2028-29, which represents a 51 per cent rise. However, social security is already the third-highest area of Scottish Government spending after the national health service and local government.
It is for those reasons that I have today appointed Liz Smith as my shadow cabinet secretary for social security. As a politician who commands widespread respect inside and outside the chamber, with a thorough grasp of economic matters, she will apply some much-needed scrutiny to that critical area.
I am not alone in thinking that our benefits system must also be fair to the hard-working taxpayers who fund it. It must be designed to lift people out of poverty, not to trap them in it. A life stuck on benefits, with no opportunity for advancement and no help to improve someone’s lot and allow them to get ahead, is no life at all. As the new leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party, I will champion our party’s core values of aspiration and ambition, and I will argue that every child should receive the best possible education.
Our party will stand up for everyone in Scotland who feels left behind by the political establishment and who feels that nobody represents them.