Challenge Poverty Week
The next item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-07602, in the name of Jackie Baillie, on challenge poverty week. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament welcomes Challenge Poverty Week, which is being organised by the Poverty Alliance and is to be held between 13 and 19 October 2013; notes that this will be the first ever Challenge Poverty Week; recognises that the week will coincide with the UN International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, which takes place each year on 17 October; understands that this day provides a chance to bring together a wide range of groups and individuals to highlight what is being done to tackle poverty in Scotland and to build momentum for greater action; commends the Poverty Alliance for its efforts in organising Challenge Poverty Week, and would welcome widespread involvement in the many local and national events taking place.
12:34
It gives me great pleasure to debate the motion to highlight Scotland’s first challenge poverty week. I thank members for the cross-party support, and I thank the many organisations that are behind the challenge poverty week and which have provided us with briefings for the debate. The organisations are too numerous to mention, but include the Poverty Alliance, the Scottish Trades Union Congress, the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, Oxfam and many children’s organisations, besides.
The rationale for holding a challenge poverty week is twofold. First, the United Nations international day for the eradication of poverty takes place each year on 17 October, and the aim is to highlight the reality of poverty throughout the world and build a greater momentum for action.
Secondly, there is no doubt that child poverty is likely to rise, so we need to galvanise public opinion and policy makers to do more to tackle the challenge. Between 13 and 19 October, a wide range of organisations and individuals will come together to do four things: first, they will highlight the reality of poverty; secondly, they will demonstrate what is being done to address poverty by the Government, local authorities, health boards, voluntary organisations and communities; thirdly, they will address the stereotypes about poverty, which I will say more about later; and, fourthly, and perhaps most important, they will create support for action to address poverty.
At the heart of all of that is the desire to ensure that the voices of people who are experiencing poverty are heard, and that they are central to sharing and shaping our approach as we move forward. I hope that politicians at all levels will engage positively with the challenge poverty week, whether at national events or at local dialogue meetings that are being arranged by the Poverty Alliance.
Only yesterday, we debated the cost-of-living crisis. Although at times the debate was very robust, there is no doubt in anybody’s mind about the scale of the problem that we face. With declining incomes and rising prices, people and families on low incomes are struggling. Let me stress that this is not just about people who are unfortunate enough to be unemployed; among them are people who are in employment, too. We clearly need to address in-work poverty and to make work pay. We have proposals to strengthen the national minimum wage and to embed the living wage in the forthcoming procurement bill.
About 400 employers throughout the United Kingdom are now living-wage employers and I congratulate them. However, only a tiny handful are Scottish employers and there is much that the Government can do to improve that situation.
On the point about the national minimum wage and the living wage, the living wage will always be partly voluntary. Would it not be better to have a national statutory living wage?
We have a national minimum wage that is a matter of statute. The issue is to ensure that it increases at a rate that is commensurate with the rate of inflation, so that its true value is felt. Under the Conservative Government, it has declined substantially—to 2004 levels, which is shocking.
A truly appalling statistic that we heard yesterday suggests that in July, one in 10 people in Scotland had to borrow money for food. That is more than 500,000 people. Some borrowed from family and friends. Others, however, borrowed from payday loan lenders money that they will be unable to pay back due to exorbitant interest rates. Food banks are being set up in our communities by a number of voluntary organisations. We are grateful for their efforts, but in 21st century Scotland that should not be happening.
We have an ambitious pledge to end fuel poverty by 2016, but I do not know whether we are on track to deliver that because the Scottish Government will not say. We have 900,000 households in fuel poverty, which is a huge national scandal that we can and must tackle. Ed Miliband announced a proposal to freeze electricity and gas prices until 2017. That would be a practical measure that would speak to the reality of the challenges that are facing people in communities throughout the country. Yesterday, however, that suggestion was met with either deafening silence or sharp criticism. Today, Fergus Ewing gave the game away. None of the SNP MSPs agrees with it and they are on the side of the energy companies and not on the side of ordinary people. Instead, budgets for fuel poverty have been cut.
Yesterday, I spoke about the efforts that have been made to tackle child poverty in Scotland. It is a fact that Scotland achieved a greater fall in child poverty than anywhere else in the UK. By 2007, we had the lowest rates of child poverty in the country. I am not complacent—they were still too high—but it is a fact that, during Labour’s period in office from 1999 until 2007, we reduced relative poverty by a third and absolute poverty by two thirds. Since then, progress has stalled. The real and pressing concern is that poverty levels are now rising. We see the evidence of that in our communities, and we need to act now because we know that the consequences of child poverty are truly severe.
A child who grows up in poverty is likely to suffer from poor health, lower educational attainment and unemployment, to experience financial hardship, food poverty and fuel poverty, and, ultimately, to die younger. Their life chances as adults may well be shaped before they reach the age of three, so it is critical that we intervene, and that we intervene early. Poverty is not inevitable; real change is possible.
The Scottish Government has a child poverty strategy, but progress in implementing it has been slow. I welcome the commitment to refresh the strategy, but there is also a need to refresh the “Achieving Our Potential” framework. It was developed in 2008, before the recession really hit, and it needs to be updated to reflect the current crisis in respect of living standards and poverty. It needs to be a driver for change at all levels of government. I hope that the minister will tell us that the Scottish Government will ensure that that happens.
I turn to the Scottish welfare fund. It is disappointing that only half of what could have been spent has been spent; I am sure that the minister shares that disappointment. There is no doubt about the level of need that exists, so I urge the Government to work with local authorities to identify whether there are unintended barriers to people accessing much-needed support from crisis grants.
I do not think that any one of us underestimates the scale of concern that exists about welfare cuts, including the bedroom tax. The Welfare Reform Act 2012 is a flawed piece of legislation that assumes that sufficient one-bedroom properties are available to enable the bedroom tax to work. Frankly, that is nonsense. I hope that the Scottish Government will see its way to supporting the call for £50 million—and protection for social tenants—to be provided.
Finally, I want to talk about perceptions. In recent years, the debate about poverty has been characterised by negative language. Terms such as “shirkers” pepper the speeches of some politicians. Public opinion suggests that people think that the unemployed are lazy or lack willpower, although there is hope, as the recent British social attitudes survey suggests that that might be changing. We have a responsibility to take the lead in ensuring that there is better understanding of the reality of poverty. Such understanding is obtained by listening to people who have experienced, or who are experiencing, poverty.
We face a crisis in the cost of living and levels of poverty are increasing. A decade of progress in reducing child poverty and family deprivation is being reversed. Challenge poverty week is a wake-up call for all of us. Let us match that call with action now to tackle poverty in Scotland.
12:43
I congratulate Jackie Baillie on securing the debate. It seems a bit like groundhog day, but I would be happy to have a debate on the issue every day if it meant that we could eradicate poverty.
As someone who formerly worked for the Poverty Alliance and who experienced childhood poverty, I recognise the issues that many people are facing. I know that poverty is unacceptable in modern 21st century Scotland, so in many ways it is sad that we find ourselves discussing the subject when its awful reality and associated consequences should have been despatched to history.
I am aware that, over the years, members from around the chamber have initiated debates on poverty. I remember the time that a good friend of Jackie Baillie—one John Park—quite rightly made reference to the fact that while politicians talk about in-work poverty, people in the real world talk about trying to make ends meet.
Poverty should not be underestimated, as it has a lasting impact on our children’s educational achievement and it results in failure to develop Scotland’s potential for growth, especially as regards people’s individual progress. In the most deprived areas of Scotland, 11 per cent of pupils leave school without any qualifications, whereas the figure for the rest of Scotland is 3 per cent.
The factors that drive poverty are diverse, but more challenging than ever. For far too long, we have relied on various welfare to work schemes—or should I say workfare, to use the phrase that is being used this week—to somehow solve poverty without there being a real rise in the incomes of those who are in or out of employment.
Poverty is wasteful, because the problems that it creates mean that we as a society regularly try to catch up, and we create projects of various types to tackle the symptoms instead of the root causes. One of the strengths of Scottish Government policy with regard to poverty in the recent past is the acknowledgment that poverty is multifaceted. It is quite right that that emphasis be acknowledged.
It is a poor indicator of society that we have, in my lifetime, had soup kitchens and the creation of food banks to distribute food parcels. I record my thanks to and appreciation of the various organisations that gather food and distribute it to those who are most in need, but the reality is that we should not have to do that. The income levels of those households should be sufficient to live on and survive without depending on handouts from charitable organisations.
Constituents and some employers keep telling me that there is confusion about the living wage and the national minimum wage and about why the figures vary so much. In yesterday’s debate, we raised the issue of how the living wage could bring in for households a meaningful income that would allow them to survive. I am not saying that that income would be handsome, but it would be a step in the right direction to securing the prosperity of households.
I am the convener of the cross-party group on credit unions and recognise the good work that credit unions do in encouraging people to save and take loans with them, particularly in the light of Jackie Baillie’s comment about payday loan companies and the problems that they currently cause.
The Scottish Government’s new economic strategy recognises that opportunities should be created for all Scotland’s people to flourish. I hope that the national performance framework, which has cross-party support, can assist in reducing the income gaps in our society and provide better social cohesion.
I thank the organisations that continue to advance the campaign to eradicate poverty, and I highlight their useful contributions to the debate on tackling poverty. I wish them every success in the campaign to eradicate poverty as quickly as possible, and look forward to the day when we can show that we have resolved the issue of poverty in Scotland once and for all.
I congratulate Jackie Baillie once again on securing the debate.
12:47
I welcome the fact that Jackie Baillie has brought the issue to Parliament for debate, and congratulate the Poverty Alliance on the work that it has done, and will continue to do.
There is a great deal that Jackie Baillie and I could disagree on, but I do not intend to dwell on those things. I refer anyone who wants to know about them to yesterday’s Official Report, and we will leave it at that. However, I would like to say one or two things about poverty that cause me concern and which I would like to be considered in the broader discussion.
Jackie Baillie highlighted the difference between relative poverty and absolute poverty. Sometimes we dwell on the figures for relative poverty. If we define poverty as a percentage of median income, from a mathematical point of view poverty will always be there in the same proportion, of course. That is why my concern is more about levels of absolute poverty. No one who looks at what is going on across Scotland can fail to be impressed and disappointed by the contrasts that exist. My concern is about why those contrasts exist and why we find it difficult to escape extreme contrasts.
Definitions of poverty vary; many people consider it to be a simple lack of means to achieve what they need to do in their daily lives. Poverty can also be defined as poverty of ambition. I do not wish to make a criticism of individuals; such poverty is, in fact, the sum total of generations of neglect by successive Governments. That is why I want to see people raising their aim. I want individuals from all levels of the communities that are affected to work together to ensure that they are successful in relieving poverty in the long term. That means individuals taking back possession of their lives and encouraging those in the most deprived situations to do the same. We need to return ambition to the people in our poorest communities.
I was disappointed to hear proposals that were aired at the Conservative Party conference this week being described simply as “workfare”.
Will Alex Johnstone give way?
I am sorry, but I have limited time and want to get finished.
To describe the proposals that were put forward this week as “workfare” is to give an unfair description of what is proposed. The specific concern was about the long-term unemployed, who are in a very difficult situation, especially in communities where there are large numbers of them. When a job becomes available, the chances of someone who has been unemployed for over two years getting it are extremely slim.
That is why the Government has produced a proposal that is designed to help those who are long-term unemployed. A third of them may be asked to do community work while another third will be asked to attend a job centre daily. That will give them the opportunity to return to a daily routine, which will help to prepare them for the workplace, because someone who gets a job but does not turn up for it will not hold on to it for long. More important, perhaps, is that the final third will be offered direct one-to-one assistance with the key problem that has kept them unemployed for that length of time. That may be a simple issue such as literacy or a more complex issue such as substance dependency and substance abuse.
That work is essential, and when our national Government produces proposals Scotland does itself no credit if every organisation and political party attacks them on the basis of their interpretation of those measures without taking the trouble to understand what the measures actually mean and what they are designed for. The UK Government has done all that it can to protect those who are in in-work poverty. By taking a huge number of people out of tax and relieving everybody who is in work of £700 of tax, it has done its bit to make work pay. We must ensure that poverty is dealt with by creating jobs and getting the unemployed into them. That is my ambition for the poor; I hope that we can raise the ambition of the organisations that support them.
12:52
I apologise for having to leave before the end of the debate and I promise that I will read the Official Report.
I congratulate Jackie Baillie on raising the topic, which is a central one for us to debate in the chamber. The briefing that we received from the challenge poverty week hit the nail on the head in saying that poverty is not inevitable and that real change is possible. That must be our starting point. The briefing is absolutely right in suggesting that we need to think through the fundamental issues that underlie poverty, which are all about inequality. We must accept that even when we make gains we cannot just move on. The challenge of inequality and poverty is to get from the Government sustained action over time.
The young people who were supported by the previous Labour Government through the surestart initiative and better schools are now leaving school at the worst time to find employment in a generation. We need to think about people’s paths all the way through their lives. There has been some excellent focus on child poverty—Jackie Baillie’s speech was excellent in that regard—but I will focus on fuel poverty and the challenge for our older people.
There has been investment in tackling fuel poverty. The first two sessions of Parliament saw huge investment in boilers for older people to enable them to upgrade their systems and to afford to heat their houses in an environmentally sustainable way. However, we no longer have that scheme. The Age Scotland report “Mind the Gap” looks at the challenge of enabling current older people to access fuel-poverty measures. Its research shows that, although awareness of the Government’s energy efficiency schemes is quite high, very few people apply for them. I know from my mailbag that many of the pensioners who apply for such support are deemed ineligible and so are consigned to live in properties that they cannot afford to heat properly. That is a real challenge.
Another concern that Age Concern Scotland has raised relates to the Scottish Government’s home energy efficiency programme Scotland—HEEPS—funds, which have been underspent and will now be reallocated. We need to understand why that money has not been spent so that we can redouble our efforts to ensure that the money is spent on what it was intended to deal with. I hope that the minister will look into that.
We need greater focus on targeting investment at challenging the problem of poverty among our older people. We have rightly debated a lot over the past few days the issue of rising fuel prices—there is action that could, and should, be taken on that—but we should also look at the number of older people who have not received support to get new boilers. Many of them live in owner-occupied or private rented housing that is incredibly poorly maintained, does not have the right standards of energy efficiency and is fitted with out-of-date and expensive heating systems. The current system is not working. Many older people are not online and are not able to access the advice that is absolutely crucial.
As I said, fuel poverty is just one aspect of the debate, but on all aspects of poverty we need to drill down into the detail. We need to have our ambition absolutely right, we need to focus on equality, and those efforts need to be sustained. We need to work on looking at each individual policy that will actually tackle poverty, because that is not what is happening at the moment.
12:56
I thank Jackie Baillie for securing the debate. We discussed the rising cost of living yesterday, and much of the material in that debate is relevant for today’s debate. When I read some of the briefings for today’s debate, I wondered what line I would take, but I think that I want to concentrate on the contrast between wealth and poverty.
Some have so much and some have so little. There will always be variations in society between the incomes of some and the wealth of others. I remember a previous boss of mine saying that people can be quite happy if someone else has a Rolls-Royce as long as they have a Mini. Perhaps that is the case, but when one person has two Rolls-Royces and their neighbour has no Mini or anything else, we know that something is definitely wrong.
On Sunday, I attended two church services in my constituency—one Catholic and one Church of Scotland—and at both the reading was about the rich man and Lazarus, which I assume some members might be familiar with. Briefly, the rich man went through his life without really even noticing the poor man Lazarus who sat begging outside his house. If we do one thing today, I hope it is that we notice and re-emphasise that this is a problem.
Whether we consider ourselves to be Scotland or the UK, we are a wealthy country, so why is there all this poverty? Part of the answer has to be about how the income and wealth are shared out—and they are not shared out very well. I am happy to accept that part of the answer is that we need better-quality jobs and better-paid jobs at the lower end. That links to having a living wage, which I hope will become statutory at some stage. That is the basic argument of “The Common Weal”, about which I know people have been speaking to both the Scottish National Party and the Labour Party. Many of us are sympathetic to that, but I do not think that that is the whole answer.
I think that we need to accept that some people are getting too much. At least in the short term, the economy is not going to grow dramatically, so how we distribute income and the wealth of this country is significant. One option is to limit the income of those at the top, but that is easier said than done. The Green amendment to the motion that we debated yesterday—we did not actually discuss that amendment—suggested maximum pay ratios, which appeal to me in some ways. However, I know that they have been attempted in the past and have proven very difficult.
The longer-term answer must be to challenge the underlying greed in all this of people who take 10 or 20 times more income than they pay some of their staff. That is also easier said than done, but at least it should be said.
I disagree with hardly a word that the member has said. In the ding-dong in here, we seldom get to discuss such issues quietly, but how does the corporation tax policy that his party is pursuing sit with what he is proposing? I ask that question genuinely and am not trying to trip him up on a political point.
The member and I have discussed the issue a few times and we will probably discuss it a few times more. Very briefly, I also have reservations about cutting any taxes, frankly. I think that the only justification for cutting corporation tax is to pull in more jobs and to bring in more tax through PAYE and so on. That is as far as I will go.
We have to change attitudes. In many ways, that is probably beyond the power of this or any other Parliament.
On the assumption that incomes will vary widely, the other option is to use taxation powers to redistribute. The present range of income tax, from 20 per cent to 45 or 50 per cent, is not very wide. When one adds national insurance, the starting rate is effectively 30 per cent. I was very disappointed when the 10 per cent rate was abolished. I would like the lowest rate to be 10 per cent again, inclusive of national insurance, and for it perhaps to go up in bands of 10 per cent. I remember when it was 98 per cent. That was probably too high, but we could go in that direction.
I am pleased that we are talking about the subject today. We need to grow the economy, but whether or not we do that, we need to share our resources more fairly.
13:01
I congratulate Jackie Baillie, as others have done, on securing the debate. I very much agree with Mr Mason on the issue of pay ratios and differentials. In her closing speech, I would be interested to hear the minister touch on a commitment to measure, which is the one thing that we could do now. A commitment from the public sector to produce some statistics on pay ratios might help us to deliver the outcome that Mr Mason suggested.
Challenge poverty week is an excellent initiative. I congratulate the Poverty Alliance and everyone who has been involved in developing the idea. John Mason mentioned the importance of Christian teaching and what the church says on some of these issues. Last year, I was struck by a comment that Sally Foster-Fulton of the Church of Scotland made to me. She said that the Christian view that the poor are always with us is not meant to be a defence; it is supposed to be a challenge.
In the policy debate on poverty and how to tackle it, we often create the distinction between absolute and relative poverty, which Alex Johnstone mentioned. Jackie Baillie mentioned the progress that the previous Labour Government made on both. There is reasonable political consensus that eradication of absolute poverty is achievable in a country with our wealth and resources, and that we should seek to export that campaign against absolute poverty to other corners of the globe.
Our politics, however, tend to divide us on relative poverty. To some extent, that division reflects the differing views of the public at large. There are those who are prepared to accept the inevitability of some poverty for other people, but people are rarely persuaded to accept the inevitability of poverty for themselves or their families. If we accept the inevitability of poverty, we must divide “others” into those who deserve our support and those who deserve their fate. The opportunity provided by challenge poverty week will play an important role in encouraging us all to reject that approach.
I will concentrate on poverty as it affects the people in Glasgow, whom I represent. Glasgow is not a poor city in many respects. The city council rightly promotes Glasgow as the powerhouse of the Scottish economy; its success is vital to the city region and all of Scotland. Quite often, the debate about Glasgow’s problems, particularly in the media but sometimes in the political debate around the city’s leadership, depicts a city that is a victim of poverty rather than a survivor of it.
Rather than list the many challenges that Glasgow faces, which are deep rooted, and the solutions that have been presented, which are often superficial and can be patronising, I will make a couple of observations. Due to the scale of the challenge that Glasgow faces, I do not believe that it is possible to have a serious plan to tackle poverty in Scotland without having a serious commitment to Glasgow. That is not to say that the lived experience of poverty in Glasgow is worse than it is elsewhere, or that poverty in Scotland is unique to Glasgow; rather, it is to recognise that in the big areas—health, life expectancy, education and quality of work, all of which add up to quality of life—the scale of Glasgow represents a capacity to intervene that we cannot ignore and the biggest opportunity to turn our faces against the idea that poverty is inevitable.
I have spoken about my city but another point that should be at the heart of challenge poverty week is the importance of individual human voices in establishing what is to be done. I care about poverty in my city and it is part of my job to advocate on behalf of the people whom I represent. We can all put in place programmes to assist people. However, it is only when we hear the voices of people who have the lived experience of worklessness—whether because of the lack of a job or because they are unable to work—or who face exploitation at work that we will ever sustain real change.
In yesterday’s cost of living debate, which has been mentioned, Iain Gray talked about the missing £1 billion—the money that has vanished from anti-poverty programmes since 2007. From the conversations that I have had with poverty campaigners, I know that there is a feeling that we have lost our focus on tackling poverty.
I might not support many of the changes to the welfare system that UK Government is pursuing or some of the Scottish Government’s priorities, but those are not the causes of poverty. We will get an understanding of the real causes and solutions and how to scrutinise the budgets only when the voices of the people who are affected are heard properly in the debate. I very much hope that challenge poverty week presents an opportunity for that to happen.
13:06
I did not intend to speak in the debate, but it has been good and I will make a few brief comments.
Through my life in my community and in my street, having worked in the social housing sector previously in places such as Broomhouse and Wester Hailes and throughout West Lothian, and having worked in education in many communities, I have seen at first hand the impact of crushing poverty on people like me and of my class who have been drained by the desperate attempt to keep their families together and a roof over their heads, and who desperately want to look after their families but find it difficult to clothe their kids and put food in their bellies.
It fills me with rage when I hear some politicians and media commentators who have no concept of living on employment support allowance, of living with a long-term condition with Atos hassling them to get a job that does not exist, or of the indignity of queueing at a food bank or hiding from the housing officer who has been sent to collect the rent. It fills me with rage when I hear people speaking about the low-paid and the unemployed when they have no idea what their life is like. We do not need people to patronise the low-paid and the poor. We need to see the colour of their money and their policies to help people change their lives.
I commend my colleague Jackie Baillie for bringing the debate to the Parliament. I encourage members who want to see what is happening in people’s day-to-day lives to contact their local council or housing association and go along, not to don a hard hat or a high-visibility vest to cut a ribbon, but to go out with a housing officer and see what is happening on the front line to people in the real world. The situation in which many people in the community find themselves is not just difficult; it is scandalous in what we attempt to call a civilised society.
On the bigger picture, I find myself agreeing with a great deal of what John Mason said—I do not know whether that should worry him or me. We absolutely need a taxation and economic system that puts addressing inequality and unfairness at the heart of policy making and budget decisions.
I commend the churches, the trade unions and the vast range of community groups that work every day on this agenda. Two years or a year and a half ago, Drew Smith and I went to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland to hear the report of its commission into economic activity. I commend that report to everyone. It is a fantastic piece of work, and I hope that, in future, some of the recommendations that it made come to fruition.
13:09
Like others, I congratulate Jackie Baillie on securing the debate. Every opportunity for the Parliament to make its voice heard on tackling poverty and inequality in Scotland is valuable.
I also thank the Poverty Alliance for organising challenge poverty week. Tackling this fundamental issue is a key priority for the Government, and I am fully supportive of the Poverty Alliance’s work on the area.
Having spoken at a number of Poverty Alliance events over the past year, I appreciate how important it is to challenge poverty and the myths around it, as the Poverty Alliance is doing through its stick your labels campaign. It is clear that we must continue to work together if we are to tackle poverty effectively and dispel the myths around those in poverty and in receipt of benefits. I think that every member would agree that there are myths around poverty, which are peddled in many instances by part of the current UK Government and by some of the media. I have said that before, and I do not apologise for saying it again.
I understand how poverty affects people. For most of my working life I have been involved in front-line services that deal with the most vulnerable groups in our society: those on low incomes or on benefits, and the sick and disabled. I understand the circumstances that they are in, and I cannot stomach it when I hear such people labelled in some quarters as scroungers, when we should be working to understand the issues and help as much as we can.
The Poverty Alliance works very hard in trying to raise awareness of poverty. We recognised that in the “Annual Report for the Child Poverty Strategy for Scotland 2013”. We must listen to those affected by poverty and to what they say they need, rather than to what we think they need. That is why I regularly meet groups from around the country, including groups from the Poverty Alliance. I recently met a group from the Poverty Alliance to inform our strategy on health inequalities and to listen to what people in poverty had to say on the issues that affect them. It was a positive meeting and we got lots of practical suggestions; we will certainly consider them and will take some of them forward. The Scottish Government is committed to a long-term preventative approach to tackling the key drivers of poverty. We will continue that through the revised child poverty strategy, which will be published in the spring.
The Scottish Government will continue to protect household incomes. We recognised a long time ago that the cost of living was a real issue for people out there. That is why we introduced what we call the social wage: free personal care for the elderly; the abolition of tuition fees, bridge tolls and prescription charges; free eye examinations; the council tax freeze; concessionary bus travel for the elderly and disabled; and increasing the provision of free nursery education. All those things are intended to help people who are struggling to get by and make ends meet.
We are leading by example in ensuring that all employees for whom the Scottish Government is responsible will receive at least the Scottish living wage. We are encouraging other organisations to do that, too. Recently, another housing association came on board and announced that it is now a living wage employer.
I accept what the minister says about what the Scottish Government is doing; indeed, I acknowledge what local government is doing, too. However, will the Scottish Government take the opportunity presented by its proposed procurement reform bill to ensure that we spread that good practice to the private sector as well?
The Scottish Government is looking at the issue closely in relation to the procurement reform bill. However, as Jackie Baillie well knows, we must also look at the European rules. We want to ensure that where the living wage can be paid, it will be paid, and lots of local authorities are looking at the issue, too.
Will the minister take an intervention?
Okay, but I am almost out of time.
I thank the minister for giving way.
Does the minister accept that, even with the introduction of the living wage, there must be decent contracts and working hours, and that we must end the scandal of the zero-hour or five-hour contracts that are issued, particularly to staff in local authorities through arm’s-length external organisations?
Minister, you can take as long as you need.
Thank you, Presiding Officer.
I agree with the member that any contract must have good terms and conditions. I recognise that the living wage is only one step towards reducing inequality and that it is not a one-off solution to poverty. We are looking at every possible way of reducing poverty throughout Scotland.
I found it disappointing that, at the start of the debate, a number of issues were raised that brought politics into it. We are doing what we can to mitigate the worst impacts of welfare reform. We have already provided £40 million to protect people from the UK Government’s 10 per cent cut in funding the council tax benefit successor arrangements; £7.9 million for advice and support services; and £9.2 million to top up the new Scottish welfare fund, which I want to say something about.
We are all disappointed that that new fund has not been taken up to the extent that we wanted it to be. We are currently carrying out a thorough review, and the guidance has been changed to make things clearer to local authorities, which administer it. We are also looking at and working on improving the consistency of the fund throughout Scotland. Our commitment to the fund was made absolutely clear when the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth announced that its budget would be kept at the same level for the next two years. We do not expect to reduce the fund just now; indeed, we want it to be taken up and will be advertising it and doing everything else possible to ensure that every penny of the fund is used for the vulnerable people who require it.
On fuel poverty, the Scottish Government continues to provide funding for the fuel poor. We have, for example, the HEEPS scheme and, in response to an earlier question about why the scheme has not been taken up, I point out that we experienced difficulties at the start because the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets and the UK Government were determining the rules for the energy company obligation. We therefore reckoned that there would be an underspend, and that provided some of the £20 million that we are using to mitigate the bedroom tax. That should be recognised, because it illustrates the difficulties that we had in finding that money. However, we found it and ensured that it went back to vulnerable people. The fuel poverty budget will also stay the same for the next two years; we have not reduced it, because we expect the HEEPS scheme to be up and running, with contracts going and fuel poverty in Scotland being reduced.
Unlike the UK Government, we continue to support fuel poverty projects in Scotland; indeed, we are committing £79 million to such projects to help the very people highlighted by Sarah Boyack. We have also continued the energy advice scheme, which replaced the energy assistance package, because we realised that people were still going to miss out under the UK schemes. The fact that we are committing £60 million to the scheme for the next two years also shows that we are addressing fuel poverty.
I realise that I have gone over my time, Presiding Officer, so I will finish by saying that we will continue to take action to address fuel poverty. We are committed to the issue for the long term, but we need the support of everyone in the chamber.
I am more convinced than ever that, in order to deal with poverty in our society, we need to be in charge of our own economy and welfare system, so that we can ensure that they are fully integrated.
13:17
Meeting suspended.
14:30
On resuming—