Plenary, 20 Nov 2003

Meeting date: Thursday, November 20, 2003

Official Report 819KB pdf

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Poverty in Scotland

Good morning. The first item of business is a debate on S2M-625, in the name of Carolyn Leckie, on poverty in Scotland, and three amendments to the motion.

This is not the speech that I wanted to be making this morning. I wanted to say that no one cared about low pay this morning because Scotland were through, but unfortunately we were gubbed, so I am not able to make that speech.

More seriously—the matter is very serious—the top-paid businessman in Britain earned £564 million last year. Is it right that a single oil trader is worth the same as 51,000 hospital workers? I think not. The top earners' wages increased by 33 per cent on average last year, whereas public sector pay increased by less than 3 per cent. Members should take as examples people such as Margaret, who inputs complex data in the NHS and earns less than £11,000 a year; or Jim, a porter who just clears £180 a week basic and works for 60 or 70 hours a week to supplement his dire wage.

There are twice as many women in low-paid work as there are men and 30 per cent of workers in Scotland are below the Low Pay Unit threshold. The biggest growth area in this country is poverty in work. Even Buckingham Palace, which has a recruitment and retention problem that allowed a Daily Mirror journalist to secure a job, pays staff only £11,000 a year.

Women spend 90 per cent of their earnings on child care and other services that help them stay in work. Only one fifth of the poorest children in our country—the destitute poor—have parents in work.

We hear endless chattering from the four big parties about how to grow the economy; the usual solution is to give money to big business. The Scottish National Party plans to cut corporation tax, if it ever gets its hands on it, to 13 per cent. It wants to put more money into the hands and bank accounts of rich shareholders in New York, Tokyo and London. Surely it would be better to put the money into the hands of public sector workers—which it is possible for the Scottish Parliament to do—and give them money to spend.

It is not for me to defend the SNP's economic policy, but is not it the case that cutting taxes is not so much about giving money to big businesses as it is about just not taking it away from them?

I am sure that Brian Monteith knows that big business is already well endowed in the money department. Putting money into the hands of people who do not have money means that it is more likely that it will be spent in the economy rather than used to top up already-swollen bank accounts, as I am sure Brian Monteith realises. What I suggest would surely be better.

However, that is not enough. As members know, the Scottish Socialist Party wants an independent socialist Scotland that has control of all our resources, all taxation and so on. It is not enough merely to increase the minimum wage for public sector workers, although that is possible within the powers of the Parliament. I ask the Executive, "Why not?"

That takes me to the 35-hour week, which would free people up to contribute to and enjoy life and contribute to the economy. People would make a greater contribution by spending more on recreation, such as going to the cinema and so on. A 35-hour week in the public sector would create 24,000 jobs and boost the whole economy. Forty years ago, Harold Wilson—a Labour Prime Minister—promised us that in the year 2000, at the start of the 21st century, we would have a 20-hour week. He justified that by saying that technology would mean that we had a growing economy such that we could afford to pay high wages and have a 20-hour week. We are still waiting; in fact, the working week for public sector workers and others has lengthened since then.

Can the member tell Parliament how much the creation of 24,000 additional jobs in the public sector will cost each year?

I can, if Stewart Stevenson holds on for a minute—I have the figures here. It would cost £350 million. That is the same as the whole budget of Scottish Enterprise or half of last year's underspend. That spending would create jobs and boost the economy.

Poverty is the word that dare not speak its name in the chamber. Poverty is not only about the people who beg on the streets outside Waverley station; it is about the single parent who is trying to bring up two, three or four children and who goes without food at the weekend, without a warm coat, without a decent pair of shoes or without a power card over the weekend. That is poverty; that is the general experience of one third of children in Scotland. That is a great shame on Parliament.

If any member tells me today that a hospital porter, a hospital domestic or someone who does administration or clerical work is not worth the Council of Europe decency threshold—which is £7.50 an hour—I ask them to justify that statement. I ask them why it is acceptable to pay people only £5 an hour and why it is acceptable to force porters and domestics to work 60, 70 or 80 hours a week so that they can afford a power card at the weekend.

MSPs are on £49,000 a year. How much does that work out at as an hourly rate? Can members tell me? A 35-hour week would be nice for us because we work extremely hard, but we do all right on the pay.

I ask members to consider seriously what it is possible to do within Parliament's powers. It is possible to transform hundreds of thousands of lives. Do not give excuses and do not say that we cannot afford it—it is not money that is absent, but the principle and the political will to deliver. I want Parliament to send to all the public sector workers in Scotland today the message that we genuinely value them and that we will not pay them lip service, patronise them or just tell them what a great job they do; rather, we will pay them at a level that acknowledges that we value them.

I move,

That the Parliament recognises that only in an independent socialist Scotland will the obscene poverty and inequality that scars our nation be permanently tackled; recognises, however, that the limited powers available to it currently must be utilised fully to tackle the root causes of poverty as effectively as possible; accepts that it has complete power over pay and conditions in the public sector which involves almost 500,000 workers; resolves, in order to eradicate low pay and improve working conditions, to introduce a public sector minimum wage set at the internationally recognised European decency threshold and a maximum working week of 35 hours to tackle the socially destructive long hours culture which currently pervades too many Scottish workplaces; believes that a £7.50 per hour minimum wage and 35 hours a week policy funded by the abolition of Scottish Enterprise and full utilisation of existing block grant will eradicate low pay in the public sector and help increase wages in the private sector, and resolves to continue collectively the push for full independence and democratic control over Scotland's vast wealth and resources to improve the standard and quality of life of all Scotland's citizens.

I am pleased to be in Parliament again debating poverty, because it is an issue of such importance to Scotland. It is vital that we lay out our strategies to tackle poverty and disadvantage. I am proud that the Executive has made social justice, closing the opportunity gap and ending child poverty central to our vision for a fair and equal Scotland. We have been honest with the Scottish people: we have said that it will take a generation to eradicate child poverty, with significant gains along the way. We have been open with all stakeholders in Scotland: we have published our milestones and targets and we map and publish progress as we continue.

We are interested not in a list of demands or in short-term fixes, but in a long-term sustained strategy to end the scourge of poverty in Scotland for ever.

As Father Joseph Wresinski said:

"Wherever men and women are condemned to live in poverty, human rights are violated. To come together to ensure that these rights be respected is our solemn duty."

The fight against poverty underlines all that we do.

It is those who live in poverty and disadvantage who tell us that the causes of and solutions to their problems are complex. They ask not for one or two policies, but for many. It is Parliament's duty not only to state the case, but to come up with the solutions, and I argue that the Scottish Socialist Party has not listened to and, therefore, does not adequately represent poor people. If it did, it would not claim that two or three soundbite policies would work.

I agree with Margaret Curran that many policies are necessary to address poverty, but will she address the simple question of whether a £7.50 an hour minimum wage in the public sector—which the Scottish Executive can deliver—is one of her policies? If not, why not?

The minimum wage is extremely important, and I will address it later on. However, everyone who is engaged in the poverty debate—particularly the victims of poverty—appreciates that the minimum wage does not take into account the hours that are worked, the size of the family or, for example, disability within the family. To tackle poverty, we need to target measures much more effectively, which is exactly what the Government's strategy on tax credit does.

There are no quick fixes: one policy will not address the whole problem. It was quite nostalgic to hear what seemed to be the old-style Militant talk and approach—a list of demands being knitted together as if that somehow presents a solution—that I have not heard for quite some time. From memory, the only thing that was missing was the demand to nationalise the top 200 or so companies, but perhaps the SSP is new Militant and has dropped that demand.

The SNP, too, talks about poverty but it cannot tell us what it would do: it cannot say whether it would end poverty, what it would do to end it or how it would do that. The SNP gives us no definitions, no measures and, in fact, no policies.

We also have the Tories, who were in power for almost two decades but did not even accept that poverty existed. We must never forget the devastation and waste of human lives that they left after two decades in power.

Will Margaret Curran give way?

Will Margaret Curran give way?

Oh, gentlemen—of course I will give way.

I do not necessarily accept that measures of relative poverty are always the truest assessment of poverty, but does the minister accept that disparities in income—the Executive's own measure—have increased rather than decreased since new Labour came to power?

I will talk about relative measures later, but I tell Murdo Fraser that the one trick that we have pulled off that the Tory Government never quite managed is a sustained increase in incomes of 19 per cent since Labour came to power. We are tackling poverty and improving the conditions of ordinary working people and other people throughout Scotland, but we are also managing to lift the level of prosperity of everyone in Scotland and Britain.

The minimum wage has been discussed. Let us remind ourselves that Michael Howard claimed that it would result in the loss of 2 million jobs and that the policy would be a disaster. However, what has happened is not quite what Michael Howard suggested.

The Tories would scrap the winter fuel allowance, end the new deal and end the child tax credit, which would leave young people, pensioners and families with far fewer resources. At the end of the Tory policies, once all those measures had been taken away, what would we be left with? We would be back to the Thatcher years, which is exactly what Michael Howard proposes.

It is the Executive that is on the side of poor people, because it understands that poverty must be tackled in all its complexity. We have to understand the impact on children of growing up in workless households. We have to understand that that means lower aspirations and lower educational achievement for children who should do much better, and that it means that families will be burdened with debt, will struggle to heat damp houses and will have to live with ill health or care for someone who is in ill health. That is what the Executive is focusing on, and we have a range of policies to address it. We understand that work is the best route out of poverty; if one policy has crucially altered working people's circumstances, it is what we have done to tackle unemployment. The SSP has no policies that could address that, and members should remember what the Tories did to unemployment levels in Britain.

Fuel poverty has been halved from 35 per cent to 17 per cent and we have made significant cuts in the levels of absolute poverty. We have sophisticated homelessness strategies and we are tackling youth unemployment systematically. There have been systematic improvements in the level of rises in income. We have focused on those who live in severest poverty, which is where our policies should properly be focused, but we are not complacent: we know that there is more to do and we know that it will take a generational shift to do that work. We want continuing and faster reductions in the level of low-income poverty among children and pensioners. We want a step change in life expectancy and we want health improvement for disadvantaged groups. We want to improve educational prospects for disadvantaged children and to widen access to higher education. We also want regeneration of disadvantaged communities to continue.

I say categorically to the Parliament that the poor in Scotland do not need the tired old policies of the past, the confused policies of the SNP or the slogans of the SSP, who would do nothing for the poor in Scotland.

I move amendment S2M-625.3, to leave out from first "recognises" to end and insert:

"welcomes the Scottish Executive's commitment to tackling poverty and disadvantage; notes the Executive's work towards increasing opportunities through growing the economy including delivering on A Smart, Successful Scotland, delivering excellent public services, particularly in education and health, and through supporting strong communities through community regeneration and focusing on the interests of the individual."

There is a shared belief in the Parliament—perhaps with the exception of the Conservatives—about the importance of tackling poverty, and I congratulate the SSP on using its first debate in the parliamentary session to raise that important subject. However, although the SNP shares an analysis with the SSP, we share little in our solutions. My colleagues will develop the SNP's approach to solving poverty; I will focus on the SSP.

I will quote from Tommy's Trots' manifesto for the election in May this year:

"The election of a group of Scottish Socialist MSPs would electrify Scottish politics. It would ignite a bonfire of debate about the future of Scotland and the feasibility of socialism."

We got the group, we are 203 days on, and we have our first SSP debates, but Guy Fawkes night has been the only bonfire. The SSP's participation record has been woeful. Rosie Kane promised us mayhem and madness, but she has been at just over half the meetings of Parliament and at only one of the eight meetings of the Local Government and Transport Committee. She has spoken fewer than 5,000 words since becoming an MSP, and the cost of those words is £5.59 per word.

I do not know which disgraceful remark I will address first. Stewart Stevenson ought to check with members before he makes personal remarks about them. That is all that I will say on that, but I have a question about "Tommy's Trots": will Stewart Stevenson explain to me what a Trot is, because I do not know?

I think that it was Corporal Jones who said:

"They don't like it up ‘em".

The cost of every word that Rosie Kane has spoken in Parliament is £5.59, and here are some of the subjects that she does not think are important: police pensions, bus services and taxis for disabled people.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. Rule 7.3 of the standing orders is about treating members with a bit of dignity and respect, but the personal remarks in Mr Stevenson's speech were outrageous.

No—they are part of the normal rough and tumble of the debate.

I have in my hand the list of subjects that the committee has discussed and the attendance record. Rosie Kane does not think that local railway stations or taxis for disabled people are important.

Will Stewart Stevenson give way?

She did not even turn up to debate the Antisocial Behaviour etc (Scotland) Bill—Tommy Sheridan had to turn up even though he is not a member of the committee.

Will Stewart Stevenson give way?

The debate is not about Rosie—

Will Stewart Stevenson give way?

It is clear that Stewart Stevenson is not giving way.

I will give way.

Would Stewart Stevenson speak to me about a matter outside the chamber, please? [Interruption.]

Order.

What Stewart Stevenson has said is extremely personal, and I resent very much such personal attacks on me in what is supposed to be a debate about poverty. He clearly has a poverty of decency.

What I am saying is about the poverty of ambition and ideas in the SSP. Tommy Sheridan claimed that his policies were popular, practical, radical and deliverable, so I will talk about some of them. He would nationalise trains, buses and ferries. How much would that cost? We could have a free public transport system tomorrow for the money that nationalisation would cost. Constituents of mine would love to have public transport—they do not care about its ownership. What about rural areas? Would the introduction of £100 million of special road tolls for heavy goods vehicles help the poor in our rural areas?

Miss Leckie's motion proposes a minimum public sector wage of £7.50 an hour and a working-week ceiling of 35 hours. She tells me that the 24,000 jobs that would thereby be created would be paid for by abolishing Scottish Enterprise and would cost £350 million, but page 11 of the SSP's manifesto says that it has already spent that £350 million in raising the public sector minimum wage. The actual cost would be £328 million, plus £120 million for additional costs, plus offices to accommodate 24,000 people, which would cost £750 million.

We have already spent £1 billion but have considered only two of the 200 commitments in Tommy Sheridan's manifesto. By the time we get to the bottom of it, we will find that we have doubled the spending in the Scottish budget and have hardly touched poverty.

A high-cost economy is an unfair economy. The evidence from high-cost economies everywhere is that they cause impoverishment of the masses. My colleagues and I will develop that subject. It is abundantly clear that Tommy Sheridan's people have yet to step up to the bar in the Parliament to make a meaningful contribution that will help the people of Scotland. Tommy's plans would damage our economy and would do nothing to ensure that more resources reached those who are in greatest need.

I move amendment S2M-625.2, to leave out from first "recognises" to end and insert:

"believes that the implementation of many of the proposals in the Scottish Socialist Party manifesto would only ensure that the unacceptable poverty of the poorest in our society would come to be shared by more of our citizens than at present."

We are seeing some unusual alliances in the chamber this morning.

I was somewhat surprised to find that the Scottish socialists were proposing a debate on poverty because, if there was ever a political ideology that has caused human misery and poverty throughout the globe, it is socialism.

Let us consider the example of a few socialist countries. North and South Korea share the same peoples and the same geography; the only difference between North and South Korea is political ideology—North Korea is a socialist state, while South Korea is a democratic country with a free-market capitalist economy. Gross domestic product per capita in North Korea is a mere $1,000 per annum, whereas it is $19,400 in South Korea. Infant mortality in South Korea stands at a mere 8 per 1,000 live births, whereas it is 27 per 1,000 live births in North Korea. North Korea has a miserably low growth rate while South Korea is booming. The whole of North Korea is in extreme poverty and is dependent on foreign aid from the rest of the world to avoid starvation of its people, who are oppressed and miserable. In contrast, South Korea is a prosperous country that is reliant on market economics to grow business, create private sector jobs and generate wealth, which all contribute to the elimination of poverty.

Does the member accept that it is not necessary to look that far to find such discrepancies in life expectancy and mortality rates? One need only compare Drumchapel and Bearsden to find differences in life expectancy of 10 years and differences in mortality rates for children. Glasgow has the four poorest constituencies in Britain, which is the fourth richest country in the world. Will the member explain that and say what he would do about achieving a £7.50 an hour minimum wage—in other words, will he speak to the motion?

I will be happy to address some of those issues in a moment. I merely observe that for many years the party that was in power in this country and in many of the local government areas to which the member referred has been the Labour Party—not my party.

I appreciate that the socialists find the comparison with North Korea uncomfortable. Let us take another example—Cuba, which is Mr Sheridan's favourite holiday destination. GDP per capita in Cuba is only $2,300 per annum, whereas it is more than $25,000 in the United States. Cuba is a recipient of foreign aid to the tune of $68 million per annum; the UK, on the other hand, is a foreign aid donor to the tune of $4.5 billion per annum. Far from being attracted to a low-poverty utopia in Cuba, people are desperately trying to leave the country to escape poverty and political oppression. Every year, hundreds, if not thousands, of Cubans risk death trying to escape Cuba—and the evil Fidel Castro's regime—by boat to reach the United States, with its free economy and political system.

I thank the member for his selective statistics. He mentioned life expectancy earlier. Life expectancy in Cuba is 76 years of age; it is 73 in New York and only 74 in Glasgow. Can he explain how a country as poor as Cuba has managed to produce a health service that results in a life expectancy of 76?

If life expectancy in Cuba is so great, why are people risking their lives to avoid the socialist regime there? Why are they getting on boats to sail across the channel to the United States? Things cannot be that great in Cuba if they do that.

They go to America because America continues to impose illegal economic blockades on Cuba.

Exactly—they go to get the freedoms that are available in the United States but not in Cuba.

I am probably way over time.

You have a minute to close.

It seems that the socialists would prefer everyone to live in misery and on low incomes, provided that there were no disparities of income. We believe that the Scottish Government should be seeking to create wealth in our country and to reduce the burdens on businesses, such as high business rates and water charges, and to reduce the whole range of business regulation. By freeing the economy, we will create economic opportunities, which will create jobs and spread wealth. In that way, we will raise living standards for all and help to reduce poverty.

It was the great American President Abraham Lincoln who said that we do not help the poor by pulling down the rich and that we do not help the weak by attacking the strong; that is a lesson that the socialists have yet to learn. A socialist recipe will simply cause in Scotland—as it has caused elsewhere in the world—more human misery and poverty. Instead, what Scotland needs is a dynamic free economy that creates wealth and opportunity for all.

I move amendment S2M-625.1, to leave out from first "recognises" to end and insert:

"notes that socialism has caused more poverty and human misery than any other political ideology in modern history; further notes that socialist policies, where implemented, have singularly failed to remedy the lack of economic growth that is the root cause of poverty; believes that the best way to tackle poverty is to create a strong, dynamic, free enterprise economy with opportunity for all, and therefore calls upon the Scottish Executive to reduce business rates and ease the burden of water charges on Scottish business thereby taking the first steps towards improving the Scottish economy."

I am happy to support the Executive amendment and to speak against the SSP motion. I think that the SSP has a genuine concern about poverty, which is shared by most members, but I honestly do not think that some of the debate so far has done the Parliament much credit.

I agree with the SSP's concern about poverty, but I think that its proposals would not succeed in reducing it. That is why I am happy to speak against the motion. The Executive amendment is correct to stress the Executive's commitment to ending poverty—that commitment does exist. It is the job of coalition back benchers to keep up steady pressure on ministers and the whole Government machine to deliver such policies as fast as possible. In any system, there is a certain amount of inertia, which needs a great deal of energy to overcome it. The Executive's intention is leading in the right direction and some of its policies are right. For example, this afternoon we will debate fuel poverty—an area in which there has been definite progress.

The only long-term way of ending poverty is not through grants and hand-outs and so on, although they may be necessary at some stage, but by helping individuals and communities to develop their own activities and incomes. It is necessary to strike a balance between the individual and the community, but both have an important part to play.

Although we cannot create initiative, we can create a system that encourages initiative and allows it to flourish. If, for example, we could somehow harness the energies and talents of the people who go around selling drugs and turn them into something more useful, we would transform our communities. Such people have great abilities that are totally misplaced and are doing great harm. There is a lot of ability that we are not using.

The whole Co-operative movement, to which many members in the Parliament have a special commitment, has a great role to play at local level. If people come together, they can do something that is worth while. In the matter of community enterprise, we have kept the voluntary sector in a sort of isolation. The voluntary sector and communities can set up commercial companies—a few have already done so—to create genuinely profitable activity in communities.

From our point of view, it is unfortunate that many of the issues to do with dealing with poverty are issues that are reserved to Westminster. The Scottish Parliament and the Executive have debated debt several times. We want to do what we can to reduce the mountain of debt and to make lenders more sensible, but that is basically a Westminster issue, as are benefits and pensions. The Liberal Democrats want to help 16 and 17-year-olds to share in benefits; such issues are important. On tax, we believe that the highest earners should pay a bit more and that the lower earners should be removed from the tax system. On all those issues, we can at least apply pressure on our colleagues in our various parties at Westminster.

The member mentioned the tax and benefit systems, power over which is obviously reserved to Westminster. I understand that some Liberal Democrat members believe that we should bring those powers back to Scotland. Does the member agree that if, in so doing, we were to integrate the tax and benefit systems, we would tackle the high marginal tax rate that some of the poorest people in our society face?

There are two points to be made. For a long time, we have argued about harmonising the tax and benefit systems and bringing them together so that they are coherent. At the moment, we have to accept that tax and benefits are Westminster issues that must be made to work as well as possible.

We must aim at having a humane and acceptable form of capitalism. We have a capitalist or market system, but we must make it work in such a way that the rich do not pull ahead and the poor do not fall further and further back. One way of achieving that is through education and creating more people with skills. We must build up our indigenous industries. Electronics and call centres and so on illustrate that buying in other people's industries is not the answer.

The amendment sets out a fair position, but the Executive must deliver on its commitments.

We move to open debate. Speeches should be of four minutes plus time for interventions.

The subject matter of today's debate has bypassed many contributors so far. Perhaps that is because it is uncomfortable for the other parties to address the main fact, which is that we have the power, even in our limited Scottish Parliament, to address poverty pay within the public sector.

None of the other parties has yet been able to justify why we continue to pay poverty wages in the public sector. We have the opportunity not only to pay the European decency threshold of £7.50 per hour but to introduce a 35-hour week to tackle head on the long-hours culture that, unfortunately, destroys many families and communities across Scotland. We have that opportunity because we have the finance available to pay for it. If Scottish Enterprise's £450 million annual budget was deployed in the creation of a £7.50 an hour minimum wage across the public sector and the introduction of a 35-hour week—

Will the member give way?

I ask Phil Gallie to give me just a wee minute so that I can develop this point.

According to the Scottish Parliament information centre, which took advice from the University of Stirling economics department, introducing the £7.50 per hour minimum wage and the 35-hour week across the public sector would create 24,000 new jobs. Margaret Curran and others asked what would happen to jobs. Our policy is not just an anti-poverty policy but a job-creation policy. Stewart Stevenson asked about the costs. The wage and labour costs attached to the creation of those jobs would be £328 million, which is less than any of the underspends in each of the previous four years of our Parliament.

That is the problem. Time and time again, people say that we do not have power over pensions and benefits—

Will the member give way?

I ask the member to give me a wee minute.

People say that we do not have powers over other areas of our economy. We should have those powers, because to tackle poverty permanently we require an independent socialist Scotland with the full powers of a normal country. However, if we want those new powers, let us use our existing powers. Let us use the powers that we already have to tackle poverty pay.

Will the member take an intervention?

No thanks.

Let us try to give the workers who deliver our public services a decent standard of living. If it is good enough for the public purse to be able to afford £49,000 a year for MSPs, it should certainly be good enough for it to afford £25,000 a year as a minimum wage for public sector workers.

It was interesting to listen to the remarks that Stewart Stevenson made today on behalf of the SNP—perhaps that is the new SNP. He said that, under this socialist ideology of ours, we would have public railways, public ferries and public buses. Not so long ago, that is what his party stood for. Perhaps he should read his party's recent documents.

Sit down, my friend.

Stewart Stevenson brought into the Parliament language that he should be ashamed of. I would be interested to hear what the SNP women members think of phrases such as "Get it up 'em." That is great—that really raises the level of debate. He has disgraced his party this morning. It would have been much better if he had attacked us on our economic policies rather than try to personalise the debate. However, when people have lost the argument, they always have personal assaults and personal attacks in reserve. That is what Stewart Stevenson is good at—unfortunately, that is all that he is good at.

Today, we are saying that we should use the limited powers that the Parliament has to be serious about tackling poverty. The biggest growth area in poverty is low pay. Let us show by example and lead from the front. Let us have a minimum wage of £7.50 an hour and a maximum working week of 35 hours to raise the public sector workers out of the scourge of poverty and set an example for the private sector.

I agree with Carolyn Leckie on one thing, which is that the Labour and trade union movement has a fantastic tradition of focusing on poverty and finding effective means to deal with it. From John Wheatley's vision of developing affordable public housing to Aneurin Bevan's creation of the health service and to the work done by successive Labour Administrations at national and local level in making educational opportunity accessible to those previously excluded, tackling poverty has been at the forefront of our aims, intentions and policies. What Carolyn Leckie did not say is that she and her party have stepped out of that tradition. They are apostates. They have moved away from our goals and have adopted a nationalist agenda. I will return to that point.

The most effective anti-poverty interventions are a consequence of Labour's making employment the top priority across the United Kingdom. We now have the lowest levels of unemployment in Europe. We have made paid work accessible for many more women by dramatically increasing child care provision. Many of those who were excluded from employment because they lacked skills or confidence have been supported on their journey into work. There are 1.5 million more people in jobs and 350,000 fewer children living in workless households than there were before 1997. Those are real achievements and real efforts. They have been achieved not easily, but by the co-ordinated work of Labour Administrations.

Margaret Curran is well aware that I believe that there is more to do. Targeted intervention is necessary to ensure that more people in West Dunbartonshire and in constituencies such as hers benefit from what has been achieved elsewhere in Scotland and across the UK. All that the SSP has to offer are false promises and a denial of rights to people. In my constituency, the SSP opposed the building of new schools for the people of our area. The SSP has opposed the modernisation of health services and has resisted moves to provide better protection for vulnerable elderly people through the provision of community wardens and other measures to deal with antisocial behaviour.

For the people whom I represent, poverty is not an academic debate or a slogan to be cast up on the wall. They have seen too much of it over a long period. They know that the £200 heating allowance makes a difference, as does free concessionary travel. They know that the pensioner credit will help many people who have small occupational pensions, such as many of my constituents in Clydebank. The increases in child benefit and the introduction of education maintenance allowances and modern apprenticeships are all practical measures that we have delivered to tackle poverty effectively.

The minimum wage that is derided by the SSP is pitched at a level that is close to the minimum wage levels in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Ireland. Tommy Sheridan gets his European decency threshold only from his fevered imagination. We are delivering real positive change that affects the poorest people. All that he offers are false promises that are based on a complete fallacy.

The Scottish service tax would discriminate against working families and would risk the loss of huge sums in council tax—£276 million—that are currently paid through the benefits system.

Will the member take an intervention?

I would take interventions if the SSP had given enough time for us to debate the issue seriously. That is the SSP's fault.

It seems strange that a party that claims to be socialist wants to shift the burden of taxation from property to earned income.

However, it is no less inconsistent that the red nationalists, who sit on the same benches as the green nationalists and their yellow counterparts, are prepared to put poor people on the front line by taking us down a path that would tear apart our links with the rest of the UK. The rainbow coalition that we can see taking shape across the chamber includes those who want to improve competitiveness by going down the George Bush route of reducing business taxes in a bizarre and unwinnable game of beggar my neighbour, while Tommy Sheridan's approach is to say that we can massively increase wages. Both those approaches cannot be right. They do not sing from the same hymn sheet but, fundamentally, they say that the same mechanism will deliver those irreconcilable goals.

At the end of the day, the Scottish socialists have to be serious and say what they believe in. If they believe in tackling poverty and the things that the Labour movement has always stood for, they have to stand with us and engage in real politics. If they want only to posture—which I believe to be the case—they can carry on being red nationalists and working with their colleagues. Let us then see what the voters think, but the voters have been pretty decisive every time up to now.

I want to join Stewart Stevenson in welcoming the choice of debate, but I do not want to join in his personal attacks.

How bad is poverty in Scotland? All of us have heard the figures. According to the most common definitions, one in three people in Scotland grows up in poverty and one in four households in Scotland suffers from poverty. Many of them are the working poor who are in poverty because of a low-income job. Poverty is endemic in Scotland. The long, slow decline that we have seen in the heavy industries that attracted people to the central belt has created urban poverty. There is also the problem of rural poverty, the severity of which is often not recognised.

The Scottish Parliament was created because Scottish problems are different. We need to create distinctive Scottish solutions in an independent Scotland that can take control of our economy and our social policy. We need to move towards integrating the tax and benefits systems, creating a new safety net of a citizens income scheme, which would not create the poverty trap that exists under the current benefits system.

Let us look at the motion. The 35-hour week for public sector workers, which has not been discussed in any depth so far, is an important initiative that needs to be addressed in Scotland now. The French have experimented with the introduction of the 35-hour week and, according to the latest figures, 200,000 new jobs have been created in France as a result. The 35-hour week was introduced in France to improve working conditions for workers and to end the situation in which one third of French society was underworked and the two thirds who were overworked suffered from the stress caused by that overwork. The aim of the French experiment was to change people's understanding of work and the balance between work and recreation.

That experiment has been tremendously successful. People claimed that it would lead to the collapse of the French economy, but the 35-hour week has led to a decline in unemployment and has produced a much better work-life balance across the board. There have been problems, including over-bureaucracy for small employers and how to fit overtime into a 35-hour week—that is a particular problem for many of the low-paid workers who depend on that overtime.

In some situations, the new flexibility of the 35-hour week has been used as an excuse for the introduction of the so-called flexible working practices that have undermined the work-life balance that the 35-hour week was designed to create. That said, I repeat that the experiment has been a tremendous success. It has made France richer in jobs, questioned the role of work and re-emphasised that what is important is quality of life for all in society rather than growth for growth's sake. That is why it is really important that the motion raises the topic of the 35-hour week. However, it is clear that the 35-hour week cannot be introduced across Scotland until we have an independent Scottish Parliament with full powers.

What would the effect be on patients of the imposition on the health service of the 35-hour week?

You should begin to wind up, Mr Ballard.

It would mean more jobs. For far too long, we have tolerated the present situation of junior doctors working for 50, 60 and 70 hours a week. That system does not work—one cannot work people harder and expect to get the same productivity from them. We need to reduce hours so that people can be more productive during the hours that they work.

We need to end poverty pay in the public sector, move towards a more flexible understanding of work and tackle the underlying causes of poverty. That can be done only if we have the full powers of an independent Scotland. In the meantime, we need to tackle the issues of overwork and underpay in our society.

I am very happy to speak in the debate. However, I regret that the SSP motion does not refer to a large percentage of our population—the pensioners who live in poverty. I note what Des McNulty said about making a difference, but all that I can say to him is that we have had new Labour for six years at Westminster and four and a half years in the Scottish Parliament.

I looked again at a speech that I made in the chamber around the same time of year in 1999 and noted how little has changed for Scottish pensioners since then. At that time, the basic state pension for a single person was £66.75. Four years on, the figure is £75.50, which is an increase of a mere £8.75—or £2 per year for each of those years. When council tax rises, fuel cost rises, inflation and so on are taken into account, I would be surprised if Scotland's pensioners are even where they were all those years ago.

The statistics from Help the Aged and Age Concern Scotland on the subject are chilling. The number of pensioner households in the United Kingdom who receive means-tested benefit is expected to reach 57 per cent by the end of this year. Indeed, 23 per cent of those aged 60 and over who are entitled to income support will not claim it but will continue to live well below what is a living wage.

The figures also show that 41 per cent of single pensioners receive a net reported income that is lower than £6,000 per year. In 1979, 12 per cent of single pensioners were reckoned to be living in poverty. However the figures for 1995-96 show that the percentage increased by 33 per cent. Those are the financial circumstances in which many of our 1 million Scottish pensioners find themselves.

In 1999, I made a speech about access to health care, in which I said:

"social work cuts in East Lothian … caused a home to close down, people to be dispersed, meals on wheels to be stopped and pensioners to be given two week's supply of frozen food."

I also raised the issue of the day care centre at Broomhill in Penicuik, which provided respite care for the elderly and which was running out of money. The centre needed just a little bit of money to meet its needs, in comparison with the sums that the Executive was spending on all its shiny brochures. What has changed? The day care centre still struggles for money, homes are still being closed in East Lothian—indeed, a home in Cockenzie is struggling at the moment to stay the course—and pensioners are still being moved from residential home to residential home like bits of furniture in the back of a removal van. Nothing has really changed in all those years.

I turn to access to health care in the community. I commend members in the previous session of the Parliament, including members of the Health and Community Care Committee, for pursuing the issue of free personal care for the elderly in the face of a resistant Executive. However, the delivery on the ground is not what we parliamentarians thought it would be. Instead we have cuts in district nurses and cuts in care. I saw that dreadful "Panorama" programme and I am sure that the way in which the elderly people were shown to be treated is echoed in some care homes in Scotland.

In my last few seconds, I want to repeat something that I said about travel in the same debate in 1999:

"The three important words in relation to transport and pensioners are: available, accessible and affordable."—[Official Report, 2 December 1999; Vol 3, c 1181-1182.]

I remember that Sylvia Jackson referred to a national concessionary fare scheme for pensioners. It was announced in time for the first Scottish Parliament elections but is it in place? No. Nearly five years down the line, we still do not have free transport for pensioners in Scotland.

Will the member give way?

No, I cannot. I am in my last minute.

If a pensioner wants to travel from Penicuik to Peebles, they can get as far as Leadburn on their concessionary fare pass. However, from that point onwards, they have to pay £1.50 return to get to Peebles. That is the reality on the ground. I say to Des McNulty that—never mind what the Parliament can do, let alone what Westminster can do—nothing has really changed. It is time for Scotland's pensioners to get what they deserve, which is a decent life.

Today we have a rare chance to debate what the SSP would actually do in power. I want to start in a spirit of generosity. A lot of SSP supporters care sincerely about poverty. As Karl Marx said, in 1888 I think, the point is not to interpret the world,

"the point is to change it."

If one is going to change the world today, it is not about the ardour of one's adherence, the power of one's rhetoric or even the sincerity of one's soul; it is about the power of one's ideas. Let us talk about the power of the SSP's ideas.

Of course, all socialists know that the single greatest driver of poverty through the centuries has been unemployment—debilitating, depressing, impoverishing worklessness. So what will the SSP do about unemployment? We have only to look as far as Comrade Sheridan's manifesto, which tells us that the SSP's first acts would be to nationalise Scotland's banks, to take over the North sea and to take control of our power stations. Not quite the top 200 companies, but fear not—the backsliding, according to the SSP's one published book of ideology, is that some sections of the economy would most likely remain in private hands. So whatever the protestations about poverty, the SSP would put thousands upon thousands of Scots on the dole.

Twenty years ago, when I first knew Tommy Sheridan, Frances Curran and Colin Fox, they were all proudly revolutionary socialists. Indeed, they were all Trotskyists. Of course, to Trotsky, mass unemployment was not part of the problem, but part of the solution—an opportunity to ferment revolutionary socialism. We do not hear much about revolutionary socialism today—the reasons have already been alluded to in the chamber—because the only two self-styled revolutionary socialist states are North Korea and Cuba.

Will the member give way?

I am sorry, but I do not have time.

Here is the rub—it is reformist governments, rather than revolutionary governments, that actually bring about change in people's lives. What the revolutionary socialists do well is rhetoric, but they do not realise change in people's lives.

I end with one more lesson for the self-styled socialists of the SSP. Their central policy for tackling poverty in Scotland is the Scottish service tax, but it was the French socialist Proudhon who, in 1840, came up with the wonderful socialist soundbite, "Property is theft." But what does the SSP want to do in this land of Balmoral, Glamis, Inverary and Dunrobin? It wants to abolish domestic property taxation all together. For Scotland's sake, the SSP should go homeward and think again.

The issue for the six SSP MSPs is that they cannot tell us whether their programme is one of revolutionary socialism that is designed to precipitate the collapse of capitalism under its own contradictions, or whether it is a reformist strategy. That matters, because the Scots are not daft. Over the centuries, they have seen every shade of socialism sell its strategy—so much so that they have learned to judge parties not by the power of their rhetoric, but by their record of delivery. Of course, what the SSP does best is not real change, but popular, anti-establishment rhetoric, which is why this debate about changing lives will be subordinated by the more populist headline-grabbing Bush baiting, to which we are about to come.

The Minister for Communities began her speech by saying that she was pleased to be here talking about poverty again. I am not pleased that we are here talking about poverty again, because the fact that we are doing so means that poverty is still a real and living thing in Scotland. It means that successive Labour and Tory unionist Governments have failed to tackle the poverty that affects far too many people in Scotland.

I have mentioned before in the Parliament that some of the people I grew up with and went to school with unfortunately have not worked for 20 years. Their children have grown up and moved into the family business—unemployment—which means that they are moving into poverty. The reality for far too many people in Scotland is that they cannot see any way out of that poverty, because politicians have failed to deliver a way out.

Will the member give way?

No, thank you.

We have heard the statistics and political theory, but I want to have a wee reality check and tell politicians in this chamber what poverty actually means to people out there, and particularly what it means for children living poverty, because they have not asked to live in poverty. Children have no control over their predicament; they learn to cope with what they are living in. Children in Scotland today have had to learn to cope with being hungry. They have had to learn to cope with being cold. They have had to learn to cope with going to school in old clothes. They have had to learn to cope with having holes in their shoes. They have had to learn to cope with not being able to go on school trips. They have had to learn to cope with lying about why they cannot go on school trips, because they do not want to tell their pals that their parents are poor and cannot afford it. That is what poverty means. We should be talking about that today, and about how we eradicate poverty in Scotland.

For adults in poverty, the reality is that they must sell anything of value that they have, although they probably get very little—next to nothing—for anything that is of value. For single parents, poverty means that they do not eat so that their children can have a meal of some sort. They do not go to Tesco or Sainsbury's; they go to the local shop, because that is the only place where they can get stuff. That means that what they buy is usually at inflated prices and usually of poor nutritional quality, and that their kids do not get fresh produce. That is poverty. That is what we should be talking about.

Poverty also means the re-emergence of loan sharks in towns and cities throughout Scotland, because when people are poor they cannot get access to money. Banks will not give them money when they need it—banks only give people money when they do not need it—so they cannot get a bank loan. They cannot get tick in most shops, because they know that they cannot pay it back. The reality is that loan sharks have re-emerged. In Ayrshire, there is a man who gives single parents a lift to the post office on Monday morning, but not because he is a nice person. He hands them their Monday books, lets them collect their benefits, then takes their Monday books back off them and takes half their benefits. That is part of the reality of being poor in Scotland today.

A phenomenon that has emerged fairly recently is that of the working poor—that is, people who are in employment, yet who are still so poor that they are living in poverty. We have to eradicate low wages and get rid of the people who perpetuate them. I have with me a printout of North Ayrshire Council's website to show to Labour members. I ask whether they are ashamed of the Labour councillors in North Ayrshire, because on the council's website today they advertise the fact that in North Ayrshire the level of wages

"is 12% below the UK level".

They advertise as a selling point the fact that the people in North Ayrshire are poor. Do Labour members know how the Labour councillors in North Ayrshire describe that? They say:

"North Ayrshire, therefore, has a very cost effective labour supply."

That means, "Our workers are exploited. Come and join in. Come and exploit our workers." That is what Labour councillors say, and it is a disgrace. I hope that Labour members are ashamed of them.

I am not sure whether Campbell Martin subscribes to the same philosophies and solutions as Stewart Stevenson but, like a number of other speakers in the debate, he was high on analysis and low on solutions. This is a serious debate about a very serious subject, which deserves a serious analysis of the issues. Unfortunately, that is not something that we have had today. The main reason for that is the flawed and highly damaging proposals of the SSP that are outlined in the motion.

The bulk of members in the chamber could perhaps agree on two things, the first of which is the importance of investment in high-quality public services, to provide the social services—health, education, transport and all the rest—on which poor people depend more than others, and which help to improve the life chances of all our citizens.

The second is the importance of productive work in building individual and community confidence, in providing income and raising the quality of life, and in providing the taxes to pay for those crucial public services. Good public services and economic prosperity are linked, which is why Liberal Democrats support both a progressive taxation system and a huge emphasis on education and skills creation—building on Scotland's academic capacity, encouraging innovation, and supporting small businesses, but also abolishing taxation on incomes of less than £10,000, increasing the rate to 50 per cent for incomes of more than £100,000, raising pensions, and bringing back proper benefits, as Donald Gorrie touched on, for people under 25. That is a progressive and radical programme that is based on partnership between the Scottish Executive, Westminster and Europe, but which supports, rather than threatens, business.

The SNP used to offer us one panacea; now we get two from the SSP—not just an independent Scotland, but an independent socialist Scotland. Give us independence, and the powers of a normal independent state, and magically all will be well. That is not so much rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic as launching a little lifeboat into the icy waters of the Atlantic and hoping for the best.

The most normal constitutional arrangement is not independence but federalism in one form or other—a partnership between central government and national, regional and provincial authorities, as exists in Germany, Spain, Switzerland, the United States of America, Australia and Canada. Federalism is a sophisticated, modern, pluralistic and liberal approach, which combines the advantages of substantial self-determination with the extra resources and clout of the larger state.

The SSP, however, offers us a second panacea or, as I would describe it, a second suicide note. The SSP presents not only the risks of constitutional upheaval but a set of policies that would destroy the Scottish economy, eliminate much of the tax revenue that is needed for public services and plunge far more people into poverty and despair. Scottish Enterprise may not be perfect, but its abolition, as proposed by the SSP—and indeed siren voices in other parts of the chamber—would strike a mortal blow, particularly in Glasgow, where the concentration of poverty is worst. Funding to restore contaminated land: gone. Funding to develop the Clyde: gone. Funding for the economic development companies: gone. Projects to create jobs and wealth throughout Scotland: gone.

The SSP's policies would also require full utilisation of the block grant—we now know that that means end-year flexibility, which is one-off money, not repeat money; the money to deal with winter sickness in our hospitals; and money that is earmarked for all sorts of key social services.

The reality is that the Liberal Democrat-Labour Executive is tackling poverty, with long-term, effective solutions, which are helping more and more people out of poverty. The socialists will entrench and increase poverty, and it would be a total and utter disaster for Scotland if they or their ilk ever had their hands on the levers of power.

This has been an interesting and revealing debate. It has been interesting because it has given members of the various parties the opportunity to say how they would tackle poverty—that is an important debate to have in the Parliament. It has been revealing because of the line of attack that has been taken by the various parties: the bitter attack by the SNP on the SSP and the bitter attack by the minister on Conservative views. That reveals the very nature of the political threat to the SNP, which is worried about the erosion from the left by the SSP. The minister is worried about the threat from the Conservative party, so she attacks the Conservatives for a change, rather than the supposed Opposition. How revealing was that?

We must, however, stick to the debate rather than simply the nuances that come out of it. It is important that, in such a debate, one does not disparage one's opponents. I will not seek to disparage my opponents, but I shall certainly disparage their policies. I, like my colleague Murdo Fraser, have considered the international circumstances of many countries and the many ways in which poverty is tackled. I recommend to members a book called "Index of Economic Freedom", which shows clearly that it is those countries that travel down the road of giving people economic freedom that tackle poverty the best. They ensure that wealth is created and spread throughout their societies. Members will find—and it will not be a surprise to them—that countries such as Cuba, Yugoslavia and Belarus, which were once part of the Soviet empire and chose not to give their people more economic freedoms, have been left behind in tackling poverty by those countries that have gone for economic freedoms. Some of those are economic freedoms that we take for granted in this country and in this chamber and some of them are economic freedoms that are being threatened and eroded.

Does the member agree that, when we consider the level of poverty and deprivation throughout Europe, the countries that are the richest and have least poverty are the small economies of Scandinavia, such as Denmark and Norway, and countries that are independent and able to pursue policies that suit them?

While there are some small countries at the top of that table, one should also mention Australia and the United States, which are not known for their smallness.

What has epitomised the approach by socialist parties—be it the SSP, which believes in socialism max, or the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, or indeed the SNP, which believe in socialism lite—is the belief that to tackle poverty we must tackle wealth. Under that approach, wealth, not poverty, is the scourge of the world. We should take wealth away from people and stop people having wealth, because then no one will be poor.

Will the member take an intervention?

No, I am in my last minute.

We, in this party, believe in a different approach—an approach that has worked in places such as Estonia, and could certainly work in Scotland and the rest of Britain—which is to spread wealth, and to give more opportunity for wealth so that it pulls up people and their families and gives them opportunities in life in order that they can then build a better society. We in this party are not ashamed to support wealth—that is the way to tackle poverty.

The motion may be long, but I thank Carolyn Leckie for lodging it, as it has allowed us to debate this important subject again. Christine Grahame mentioned that we spoke about poverty in 1999; we also had a debate on the subject on 14 December last year. It seems as if poverty is continually being debated, but what has actually happened out there? I agree with Carolyn Leckie that only with independence can we truly eradicate poverty.

I am sure that all members, regardless of their party, would agree that it is a national disgrace that children are still living in poverty. It has been mentioned that one in three children live in poverty, but one in five working adults and one in five pensioners also live in poverty. The minister said that she was happy to take part in the debate, but she also said that things were changing for the better. If members listen to the figures that are presented by myself and others, they will recognise that it does not matter how much spin is put on the issue or how many targets—or whatever the buzzword is—are proposed, things are not changing. People are still living in poverty and people are still struggling. Things are simply not changing.

Robert Brown mentioned the Lib-Lab Executive—perhaps it is the Executive that is suffering from poverty: poverty of ambition. The Executive has poverty of ambition for our country and our people. We should tackle that. If the Executive had more ambition and spoke more to its Westminster colleagues about tax credits and so on, we may not eradicate poverty but life would be a lot better for people out there.

The minister spoke about the minimum wage and family tax credits. I do not need to tell the minister that we do not have control over those issues.

What about the SNP's polices—not a word about them?

Somebody has already mentioned the policies.

We must take control over the tax and benefit systems. I believe that Westminster is using the systems to keep people unemployed. There is no point in sitting in this Parliament and tinkering around the edges.

Will the member give way?

No, I am sorry but I will not.

We will not eradicate poverty by tinkering around the edges. I quite enjoyed our little tour around the world with Murdo Fraser. We were in North Korea and South Korea and we went to Cuba and America, but I do not remember him mentioning Scotland. Perhaps if he took more interest in his own countrymen, people in this country might start to listen to him.

Des McNulty can always be relied upon to stick up for Labour policies. He is a loyalist. I was going to call him a red, white and blue man, but perhaps I will change it to just a unionist man, considering that he called us a mixture of yellow, green and red nationalists. Des McNulty constantly talks up the policies as if everything is marvellous in the Labour Party, but everything is not marvellous or all roses. He said that the Labour Party is socialist and Wendy Alexander gave us a lovely wee history lesson on socialism. Perhaps she should speak to her colleague Bill Butler, who told school kids and me last week that the Labour Party has never been a socialist party. I was surprised when he said that. Wendy Alexander mentioned socialism and socialists so often that that must be her mantra. Perhaps one way of keeping her roots would be for her to remind herself that, one day, the Labour Party might be a socialist party.

Will the member give way?

No. I am sorry; I am in my last minute.

The member is past her last minute.

I commend Campbell Martin for saying it all about the reality of living in poverty in Scotland today. We know what it is like to live out there in the sticks. It is about time that the Labour Party and the Lib-Lab Executive went out there and spoke to and listened to the people, instead of repeating to us the mantra that everything in the garden is fine and rosy.

I will deal with Mr Monteith's remarks later.

I welcome the opportunity to close the debate on the Executive's behalf. Before Mr Martin leaves the chamber, I will say that I welcome the opportunity not because I enjoy standing in the chamber talking about poverty, but because the debate provides an opportunity to discuss ways of resolving the problems of poverty. Unfortunately, although Stewart Stevenson promised that we would hear about ways in which the SNP would resolve those problems, no SNP members provided solutions. We heard a critique about poverty, but no solutions. That shows the dearth of ideas from the SNP.

Members have heard about the Executive's commitment to combating poverty and delivering social justice to the people of Scotland. However, we must not become complacent about poverty or think that we can deliver a quick fix. The problem is complex and cannot easily or quickly be solved by introducing one or two policies or initiatives.

Carolyn Leckie opened the debate. I welcome our debating poverty, but this is not the first such debate. We held a debate on poverty in September, which Ms Leckie must have missed. She suggested that we could resolve some poverty issues by increasing the minimum wage in the public sector, which she said would cost £350 million. Unfortunately, that figure does not take into account knock-on effects on property costs and additional working hours.

Will the minister give way?

In a minute.

Stewart Stevenson referred to those knock-on effects. I commend Carolyn Leckie for suggesting how the move would be paid for—by the abolition of Scottish Enterprise—but abolishing Scottish Enterprise would deny an investment of more than £500 million to deliver economic growth for Scotland. Moreover, such a move would have a devastating impact on nearly 25,000 of our vulnerable young people, as it would remove £73 million for investment in schemes such as skillseekers, modern apprenticeships and the get ready for work programme.

It will come as no surprise that business would also suffer from such a move. Not only would the training for work programme end, but Careers Scotland would disappear. Such initiatives help people into work, yet the SSP would risk losing them.

The peripheral and fragile communities in the Highlands and Islands would also suffer badly from the loss of £89 million of investment in their economies. Do they not matter?

Will the minister give way?

Will the minister give way?

I give way to Tommy Sheridan.

The minister is sadly mistaken, because Highlands and Islands Enterprise was not mentioned. The proposal relates specifically to Scottish Enterprise. Does the minister agree that the 32 local authorities in Scotland could easily perform the function of bringing together businesses and colleges to provide the training and resources that she talked about?

Mr Sheridan would still have to fund that.

The minister is in her last minute.

I am sorry, I cannot give way.

Will the minister give way?

No, I cannot.

Mr Sheridan said that extra jobs would be created if we reduced the length of the working week to 35 hours. How would we pay for that? A 5 per cent increase in the number of Scottish Executive staff would be an additional 200 staff, and accommodation for them would cost us at least £1.2 million. The facts and figures do not add up.

As I am in my last minute, I will move on to the Scottish Tory party, because we should not let it get away in the debate. Murdo Fraser talked for two and a half minutes of his four-minute opening speech about foreign economies, but we want solutions for people here in Scotland. The only solution that the Scottish Tories have is to reduce business regulation, but that must be considered as part of an Executive package that includes investing in transport infrastructure, skills and training. The biggest single cause of poverty is unemployment, which the Tory party used for most of its 18 years in power as an economic tool. The Tories must answer for that to all the people of Scotland.

The way to remove poverty is to ensure that people have employment. The Executive is committed to supporting our people into employment. That is how we will tackle poverty.

I am disgusted by some of the input to the debate. I thank Sandra White, Campbell Martin, Christine Grahame and Patrick Harvie for talking about poverty and for bringing the debate back to some kind of sense, instead of attacking, prodding and being personal about some of our colleagues. That was disgusting.

Carolyn Leckie said:

"Poverty is the word that dare not speak its name in the chamber."

Did she not hit the right note when she said that? We saw the reaction: we dare not discuss poverty. Many examples exist of the poverty that people in our communities live with. Campbell Martin gave excellent examples from the community in which I, too, live in North Ayrshire. We know about that because we live in those communities and they are real to us. Perhaps Wendy Alexander has a conscience when she talks about socialism. Perhaps she remembers her earlier days and perhaps that is the problem.

Will the member give way?

I do not have time to take an intervention.

Carolyn Leckie gave the example of a hospital porter who earns £180 a week. I would like to see people in the chamber living on £180 a week. Today, 30 per cent of Scottish children still live in low-income households and still live in poverty. The Executive has been in power for four years and is in its second term, but expresses disgusting rhetoric.

Of dependent Scottish children, 14 per cent live in homes where no one works. We have third-generation unemployment. In addition, 42.4 per cent of the Scottish population aged under 16 are children of parents or carers who claim key benefits. Those children live not in wealth, but in poverty.

We listen and are in touch, unlike Margaret Curran, who is certainly out of touch. There are now working families who have discovered that work does not pay. In Scotland, 40 per cent of households on low incomes include a working adult. One in 10 babies born in poverty in this country is underweight and up to 12 times more likely to die in the first year of their life. Death rates in the most deprived 10 per cent of areas are more than twice as high as those in the least deprived 50 per cent. Pupils who receive free school meals form just under half of all exclusions, and 48.6 per cent of Scottish applicants who are accepted at UK higher education institutions are from social classes I and II, but only 9 per cent are from classes IV and V. I could go on and on. Those are examples of poverty. I tell Margaret Curran to go out into communities and find out what that is like.

Will the member give way?

No.

It is clear that Stewart Stevenson did not understand that the debate was about poverty. I am sure that the people of Scotland will appreciate his concerns about the poorest in our communities.

Murdo Fraser took a poke at socialism and quoted several examples from throughout the globe. He needs some lessons in understanding the differences. It is obvious that he needs to take a class in economics and politics. Scotland is a wealthy country. Shame on us for not caring properly for our elderly. We cannot pay our carers or nursery nurses a decent wage, but we can pay fat cats obscenely large wages.

There are unmet child care needs, so the situation is not as wonderful as Des McNulty would like to portray it. In 2000, more than a quarter of parents reported that their child care needs had not been met in the past year. Even the number of three and four-year-olds attending nursery schools does not help the problem. Carolyn Leckie spoke of the fact that parents who are working are paying a huge amount of their wages on child care. People cannot get to work because they cannot get child care, and Des McNulty must realise that we have a long way to go on that.

The SSP recognises—as does Unison, which represents 140,000 public service workers in Scotland—that large staff shortages across the public services are evidence of the need to address low pay if services are to be reformed. There are gaps and shortages in social services. Last week, sadly, we had a debate about child protection at which we highlighted the shortage of social workers. We also have a shortage of nurses and of other health professionals. If we are to attract those people, we need to give them a decent wage. Producers are also consumers, and we seem to forget that. They are consumers of public services, and a buoyant public sector means money being spent in the economy, which helps to support small businesses.

How sad it is that Stewart Stevenson was so busy attacking Rosie Kane that he was unable to make the case for independence. The Scottish Parliament has no powers to prevent Scotland from being pushed into George Bush's illegal war. It has no powers to welcome refugees who are fleeing persecution. It has no power over our vast oil reserves, our electricity, our gas or the nuclear power plants in Scotland. It has no power to increase the pitifully low state pension or to end the degrading means tests that are faced by our elderly. We must restore the link between earnings and pensions, but we have no power to do that in this Parliament; nor do we have any power to combat exploitation in the private sector by raising the disgracefully low level of the national minimum wage.

Patrick Harvie outlined the case for a shorter working week and the need to end poverty in the public sector, particularly among workers who are overworked and underpaid. A shorter working week would give parents time to spend with their children instead of being herded into casual work where, if they are asked to work a night shift, they have got to do it or they are up the road. That is the reality in my community. It may not be the reality in Margaret Curran's community, but it certainly is in mine. This Parliament has the power to make that change for the public sector. A wage of £7.32 an hour is hardly a huge income, but it is the European threshold. Almost a third of full-time workers in Scotland are paid below the national average wage.

If Mary Mulligan is asking for a resolution, here is one: no more illegal wars in our name. Billions could be saved that could go into our economy. Those billions could improve public services and provide for our nursery nurses and other low-paid workers. I ask those members who have entered sensibly into today's debate to think carefully and to support our motion.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. Will you rule that members cannot have it both ways? They cannot say that there must be no personal attacks on themselves and then resort to making a speech that is a personal attack on a minister.

I think members will recognise that that is a useful debating point, but it is scarcely a point of order.

It would also be appropriate to ask for the Official Report to show that Ms Byrne's references to Patrick Harvie should in fact be to Mark Ballard, who made the speech in question. [Interruption.] I would be grateful not to have any other suggestions about misidentification; I did not notice any.