Meeting of the Parliament 07 January 2025
The Scottish Government’s motion describes child poverty as its “single greatest priority” and as a “national mission”. All political parties agree that it should be such a mission, but it is completely legitimate to debate, as do the amendments, whether the Government’s actions match the rhetoric, and every political party has a choice in how we take part in that debate. Do we really advance that debate purely by making party political points? We all do that, and there is nothing wrong with making party political points in a debate like this, but solely doing that, without also offering positive, constructive ideas of our own, does not advance the debate, move it forward or achieve change in the real world.
Whether in budget debates or at any other time, Greens have always sought to make a difference for people in the real world. Far too many others appear to have no interest in doing that. Some seem to have little interest in reality. The Conservatives’ dismissal of pretty much everything that the Government is doing was bizarre enough, but their leader’s suggestion that the one thing that was wrong with Liz Truss was that she was not in power longer seemed even more bizarre. There was also their failure to recognise the UK Government’s track record—the impact of tax giveaways to high earners and a brutal approach to social security—as well as the familiar ideological debate that we have had before, and will have again, on growth.
The record of even just this country’s economy is that there have been periods of high economic growth while whole communities have been put on the economic scrap heap. Economic growth on its own, without sustained and serious state intervention to ensure redistribution, does not create a trickle-down economy; it creates a hoover-up economy, empowering the wealthiest to further exploit the work of those on lower incomes.
Labour, on the other hand, seems determined, in the early stages of its term in UK Government, to disappoint. I will give credit where it is due: I really welcome the action that has been promised on the minimum wage, especially if Labour follows through on the commitment to abolish the discriminatory age bans. That will be a significant step. I give credit where it is due—but Labour does not seem willing to do the same. Anas Sarwar’s comments yesterday were dismissive of the Scottish child payment, saying that
“we have this pretence in Scotland that somehow welfare is the only route out of poverty”
and that the Scottish Government
“wants to pretend that one single benefit or payment has the answer.”
Neither I, nor anti-poverty organisations, nor the Scottish Government, have ever claimed that it was the answer, but it is the single most effective intervention from either Government in recent years. If Labour was willing to learn from what has worked, it would be copying that policy throughout the rest of the UK, not undermining it here. If the Labour UK Government had that ambition but, for party political reasons, did not want to copy what the SNP had done, it would at least reverse the worst Tory decisions, such as the two-child limit, but it will not. If Scottish Labour had that ambition, it would use the budget process to negotiate for positive, constructive change, but it does not do that either. It also refuses to back progressive tax changes, which can very easily begin to redistribute wealth from the richest to the rest.