The final item of business today is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-09225, in the name of James Dornan, on Scotland’s outlook. The debate will be concluded without any questions being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament welcomes the launch of Scotland’s Outlook, a joint third sector campaign that aims to raise awareness of the scale and impact of poverty in Scotland; recognises that the campaign uses a weather analogy with the aim of sharing meaningful examples of Scotland’s poverty outlook to inform and educate people about what living in poverty means and to help them appreciate that anyone can find themselves living in poverty; understands that there are 870,000 people living in poverty in Scotland, that a fifth of Scotland’s children are living below the breadline and that poverty is currently the biggest issue for the third sector in Scotland; notes that the Scotland’s Outlook website provides a range of materials to allow people to see the future forecast for poverty and test their knowledge of poverty in Scotland; believes that this campaign, which has been developed by third sector partners including SCVO, Macmillan Cancer Care, Shelter Scotland, Oxfam Scotland, Alzheimer Scotland, CHAS, CPAG and the Poverty Alliance, is an excellent way to highlight the challenge of poverty, and hopes that, as a result of the campaign, more people throughout Scotland, including in Glasgow Cathcart, will understand the realities of poverty and be inspired to get involved in helping to tackle poverty in their communities.
17:05
I am delighted to host this debate on Scotland’s outlook. The campaign has been developed by the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations in partnership with Macmillan Cancer Support, Shelter Scotland, Oxfam Scotland, Alzheimer Scotland, Children’s Hospice Association Scotland, Child Poverty Action Group Scotland and the Poverty Alliance, and I welcome Owen Miller from Alzheimer Scotland to the public gallery.
The campaign uses a weather analogy to share meaningful examples of Scotland’s poverty outlook to inform and educate people about the extent of poverty in Scotland, and it has used social media to great effect to get its key statistics and aims into the public domain.
One of the tools that it has used to accompany the campaign is an online quiz. I took it and—like most members, I imagine—I was shocked to see the true extent of poverty in black and white in front of me. The shocking headline is that 870,000 people in Scotland live in poverty. Of them, one in five is a child, which is an appalling statistic in energy and resource-rich Scotland.
Unfortunately, that is not the only appalling statistic that Scotland’s outlook highlights. One question was about the difference in life expectancy between a boy born in one of the wealthiest areas in the country and a boy born in one of the poorest areas. The answer is 14 years: almost a decade and a half between the life expectancy of folk who can live within 10 minutes of each other.
Another question asked how many children a day are made homeless in Scotland: the answer is 60. As we have continuously heard from third sector organisations, it is clear that the move to universal credit will cause more problems, particularly now that housing benefit will be paid directly to tenants, rather than directly to landlords.
More than 20,000 of our citizens have used a food bank in the past six months. There was a 170 per cent increase in demand in 2012-13, with benefit delays, changes and sanctions accounting for more than half of referrals. In fact, the sanctions regime has cropped up time and again over the past six to nine months. It is making life extremely difficult for both people who have been sanctioned and the third sector and voluntary organisations that are tasked with helping them.
At his recent visit to the Scottish Parliament, Secretary of State for Scotland Alistair Carmichael MP said that there may well be a link between sanctions and the use of food banks,
“as sanctions are normally the result of the conduct of the claimant”.—[Official Report, Health and Sport Committee, 12 December 2013; c 4646.]
How misguided. For that argument to have any truck we would have to believe that the current sanctions system is fair, which we know it not to be.
I am sure that I am not alone in having been contacted by constituents who have been sanctioned for non-attendance. In one case, a constituent was verbally told a date for their next adviser meeting, which was the day after the date on the back of the letter. When the constituent turned up on the date as verbally advised, they were put down as having missed an adviser appointment and sanctioned for a month. Criminals do not get that sort of treatment. It is just shocking.
The system needs to be far more flexible on sanctions. Even the right-wing think tank Policy Exchange has condemned the current sanctions regime in its report “Smarter Sanctions: Sorting out the system”, which it published earlier this month. It says:
“Under the current system, wrongly applied sanctions can cause hardship, stress, and other negative outcomes for the most vulnerable families.”
The author of the report, Guy Miscampbell, said:
“It is clear that there are a significant number of people who have their benefit taken away from them unfairly. Four weeks without any money is driving people to desperate measures including a reliance on food banks”.
My constituency has seen a number of food banks open recently, both as conventional food banks, from which people come to collect food, and as local donation points, from which food goes to the larger Trussell Trust food banks across the city.
Pastor Don Palmer, who has been instrumental in setting up the food bank in his church, spoke to the local paper about the opening of the food bank. He said:
“The interest so far has shown how many good people there are out there, who care and want to do something about the growing need for these foodbanks. They’re realising that it could be them asking for food in the next month or year.”
I heard last night at an event that I attended in the Parliament that the food bank in Stirling has run out of food despite a huge effort by volunteers to gather resources to allow it to continue. That is a shocking indictment of the current situation that we live in.
Clearly, I could not disagree with my colleague at all on that. As I said earlier, it is a disgrace for a wealthy country like Scotland to be in a situation whereby people have to rely on food banks and there is not enough food to feed people who are in such a desperate state that they have to go to food banks. [Applause.] Thank you very much, Jim Eadie—that is a tenner well spent.
The crux of the Scotland’s outlook campaign is that, as well as there being far too many people living in poverty, hundreds of thousands more are living on the breadline and just one unexpected bill or illness away from destitution. Part of that is surely related to the fact that work is no longer a guaranteed route out of poverty. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has estimated that for the first time ever more people who are living in poverty are from working households rather than workless households.
Monday saw the launch of fair pay fortnight, which highlights that income inequality is continuing to rise. The pay gap between London and Scotland, which for males is on average £165 a week, is of course bad news for our economy and living standards. However, Scotland is by no means the worst region—if we use that term—across the UK. We consider that Scotland is doing reasonably well compared with London, but we must think what the situation is like for other regions. The beauty of the situation is, of course, that we have an opportunity to change things for ourselves.
It is the pay gap between the rich and the poor that is the real scandal. Five families in the United Kingdom are worth more than the poorest fifth of the population. This is not an equal society. The situation is clearly unsustainable and cannot continue. It could be partly rectified by having a truly progressive taxation system whereby everyone paid their fair share, but we have seen little evidence in the past decade under successive Westminster Governments that they truly want to tackle income inequality, which rose under Labour and is continuing to rise.
The Jimmy Reid Foundation recently published a joint report by the late Professor Ailsa McKay and Willie Sullivan—“In Place of Anxiety – Social Security for the Common Weal”—in which they were clear in their belief that we need to totally overhaul the welfare system so that, instead of it creating an environment of fear, anxiety and insecurity, it acts as an integral part of our national strategy to pursue the interests of citizens and emphasise their social security. The report is clear that we need to change the focus of our economy from low-paid, low-skilled jobs to higher-paid and fairly paid jobs.
The report notes that having no requirement to pay a living wage costs the welfare system in Scotland at least £250 million in tax credits and other subsidies. Further, the report recognises that some smaller businesses would be unable to pay the living wage immediately and suggests that by making large companies pay it some of the extra money could be invested to ensure that eventually all companies paid the living wage as standard. The problem, of course, is that we do not have the power to do that in Scotland at this time.
The living wage should be the lowest that anyone in Scotland is paid, but it is also imperative that we move towards higher, fairer pay across the board. If we could make our economy more like the Scandinavian economies and move people out of low pay into decent pay, we could raise £4 billion more in tax without having to increase taxes at all. That extra money could help transform our public services. Obviously, I believe that such a change would be easier with the transformative powers that independence will give us.
I think that everyone in this chamber has a responsibility to ensure that, whatever the result of the referendum, we do not allow all the ideas that have sprung up because of the referendum to go unnoticed. Civic society in Scotland has flourished with ideas such as the common weal, the national collective, Scotland’s outlook and many others. Now that we have people talking about the sort of country that they want, we need to ensure that, whatever the result in September, we do all that we can to realise it.
I believe that to tackle poverty we should do all in our powers to tackle low pay and poverty pay, and ensure that future generations of people in Scotland are paid fairly and not born into endless cycles of poverty. I hope that, until Scotland has the power to set the minimum wage itself, the Westminster Government will come to see the benefits of at least raising the minimum wage with inflation. However, the recent lacklustre rise does not instil confidence that Westminster will ever really start working for poorer Scots.
Would you draw to a close, please?
Scotland’s outlook is clear that the poverty crisis in Scotland is a humanitarian one. Unbelievably, we see across the UK the Red Cross having to intervene because of decisions that are made at Westminster.
Those decisions are by and large decisions that the people of Scotland have no say over and are made by people who have little mandate to govern in Scotland and who are opposed by the majority of Scottish MPs. Polls consistently show that the people of Scotland want welfare decisions to be made in Scotland, want the power to do things differently, want to ensure that dignity and respect are at the heart of the system and want to know that we, their political representatives, have their backs and will do everything that we can to assist them.
Would you draw to a close, please, Mr Dornan?
That does not seem like too much of an ask. For many across this chamber, the opportunity to help people was one of the main reasons why we became involved in politics.
Scotland’s outlook does not need to be so dreich. There is nothing inevitable about the levels of poverty in Scotland. It will take time and effort to change the systems that maintain the cycles of poverty—
Thank you very much, Mr Dornan. You have had nine minutes.
—but we have a responsibility, whether independent or not, to break those cycles, help people out of poverty and ensure that they stay out of it.
I now call Graeme Dey, who has four minutes.
17:15
The Scotland’s outlook campaign aims to highlight just how widespread poverty is in Scotland, and how living in poverty will come to affect more and more of our citizens even if they do not necessarily expect it to. The campaign undoubtedly succeeds in doing that. If reading even the SCVO briefing on the campaign does not make members angry, then, to be frank, there is something wrong with them. Embedded in that briefing is the statement:
“Scotland is a rich country ... it is unacceptable that people are living in real hardship.”
I absolutely agree. If nothing else, contemplating the challenges that are being faced by many of our citizens, 870,000 of whom are deemed to be living in poverty, lays bare the utter obscenity of the UK seeking to renew Trident. Why would we spend up to £100 billion on weapons of mass destruction when a fifth of kids are living below the breadline?
Poverty has many guises. For most people, the word will conjure up images of deprived inner cities, but poverty is not confined to urban sprawls. Rural poverty is real, not just in the more remote areas of Scotland but in constituencies such as Angus South. That is perhaps not so surprising when we realise that the minimum standard of living can cost up to 40 per cent more in remote and not-so-remote rural areas compared with urban areas, and that a single person on basic benefits does not have even a third of what is needed to live on in some rural parts of Scotland.
Without in any way downplaying the situation in urban areas, we should acknowledge that rural households face higher living costs for transport, food and heating and that, although some have the income to cope with that, many do not. A report that Highlands and Islands Enterprise published last year states that transport costs can be up to £40 a week higher for the average single adult in rural Scotland due to lengthy commutes to work and the higher price of petrol in rural and remote areas.
However, we do not have to stray far from the major conurbations to see the challenges. In my constituency, which takes in the significant population centre of Arbroath and borders Dundee, sits the town of Kirriemuir. It has only one petrol station, so there is no competition to drive down fuel prices. Either people fill up there or they use more fuel heading to Dundee, Perth or perhaps Forfar. Kirrie, with its rural hinterland, is not on a rail line, and the bus service is as we would expect it to be in such a part of the country. If someone works, the chances are that they will have to drive, and perhaps a distance. It is the same if they want to enjoy the financial benefits of supermarket competition.
It is no surprise that many rural households are living in poverty, because on top of the areas of household spend that I have highlighted comes the clincher—energy costs. All too often, rural houses are older, stone built and detached and therefore much less energy efficient, and occupiers are left paying vast amounts for their heating, which is often provided by off-grid means. As energy prices are soaring, alternative fuels are being hit harder than mains gas. The cost of heating an average home with gas has risen by £400 in the past four years, but those who have to heat their houses with liquid propane gas or home heating oil have had to deal with rises in heating bills closer to double that.
My Westminster colleague Mike Weir has not only championed the issue with successive London Governments but on four occasions sought to help to alleviate it for the elderly. He has fought for a change to the timetable for winter fuel payments so that those who live off grid can access the support earlier in the year. That would help them to make their money go further because they would be able to buy their oil or LPG in September, when prices can be up to 35 per cent lower. That would greatly help up to 200,000 pensioners in rural Scotland who receive winter fuel payments.
However, although Mike Weir’s four attempts—two in the form of private members’ bills and two through the introduction of amendments to UK Government energy bills—have on occasion found support from other quarters, on each occasion they have foundered. Both of the major parties at Westminster have indicated support for the principle, but neither has made it happen when in government. I note that the Labour Party has indicated that, were it to be elected there in 2015, it would seek to introduce such a measure. If Labour is elected, I hope that it will see it through because, while I anticipate Scottish pensioners being able to benefit from such a move for only one winter ahead of independence, there are Welsh and English pensioners in the same boat.
I congratulate the third sector organisations that have come together to provide us with the Scotland’s outlook campaign. It makes an important contribution by highlighting and providing pointers on addressing poverty in Scotland wherever it exists and however it is caused.
17:19
I congratulate James Dornan on securing this debate on Scotland’s outlook and on most of his speech. We could agree with much of what he said, but I say genuinely that changing the constitution will not in and of itself tackle child poverty and will not in and of itself end fuel poverty, whereas changing the Tory Government absolutely will.
I join James Dornan in congratulating the SCVO and all those that are involved in the campaign—the Poverty Alliance, the CPAG, Shelter Scotland, Oxfam Scotland, Macmillan Cancer Support, Alzheimer Scotland and CHAS. Their purpose is to raise awareness of the scale and impact of poverty in Scotland and to find ways of working together to address that challenge.
I always thought that the weather was akin to a national obsession—we talk about it all the time and it is not surprising that we do so when we have all four seasons in one day. Using the weather is a clever and serious way of engaging people with the debate.
There is an explicit challenge to all of us. We need to work together across the political divide to take concerted action, which must not be delayed or limited by the referendum debate. The call for action from the sector is a call for action now and not at some point in the future.
There is no greater cause for all of us than eradicating poverty and in particular child poverty. I have worked in many areas of the west of Scotland and have seen the life chances of children already shaped by the age of three. I have seen the lack of opportunity for our young people and the struggle for families who are in work as poverty increases.
Under Labour, child poverty rates fell significantly—200,000 children were lifted out of poverty in Scotland alone—but progress has stalled recently. We should acknowledge that, in that period, poverty fell by a greater extent in Scotland than it did anywhere else in the UK. The issue is not about flags or borders but about the political will that is required to challenge child poverty. The pressing concern now is that we know that, with the Tory welfare cuts, child poverty levels are set to rise.
In the short time that I have, I will focus on in-work poverty. To echo James Dornan’s comments, the best route out of poverty has always been work, but some of the greatest falls in child poverty that we achieved occurred because we deliberately prioritised improving access to work, whether that is by improving skills or removing barriers. That approach met with considerable success.
We face a cost-of-living crisis of enormous proportions, the like of which we have not witnessed in decades. The prices of essential goods have risen by about 25 per cent in the past five years, but wages are declining in real terms. Many families who cannot make ends meet are ending up in debt and turning to payday lenders and even food banks.
However, there is something that we can do. The SNP and Labour share a commitment to the living wage. The Procurement Reform (Scotland) Bill, which is going through the Parliament, provides an opportunity for us to use the public sector’s £10 billion spending power to promote the living wage. There is an opportunity to end the use of zero-hours contracts and to improve pay, which will help women in particular, as 64 per cent of those who would benefit from the living wage are women. We did not manage to amend the bill at stage 2, but let us apply our minds to doing so collectively at stage 3. Let us work together and seize the opportunity, because the prize for both will be considerable and will contribute to tackling poverty.
Lastly, I will focus on those who are close to being destitute—people who have been sanctioned by the Department for Work and Pensions and whose benefits have been suspended. The numbers who are sanctioned have more than doubled under the current Government. Hundreds of thousands of people are affected. A disproportionate number are those with learning disabilities and mental health problems.
West Dunbartonshire Citizens Advice Bureau produced a report that highlighted the scale of the problem. West Dunbartonshire Community Foodshare has reported a huge increase in the numbers who are getting assistance, of whom 43 per cent have been sanctioned. We need to focus on those who are left with little, if anything, to live on and on ensuring that they do not slip through the net.
The level of poverty is a national scandal, but there is nothing inevitable about poverty. We can and must change that. It takes political will, which needs to be shown now.
17:24
We in the Scottish Parliament and members in Parliaments across the world should remember that we are immensely privileged: we are privileged to be parliamentarians and we are economically privileged. Very few of us will think about the amount of money that we have at our disposal when we undertake any of our day-to-day expenditure. We will be constrained simply by the fact that we do not have quite enough money in our wallet because we did not go to the cash dispenser. Too many families across Scotland do not have the luxury of being able to make the kind of choices that are available to us.
My wife has just filled up our fuel tank after the winter. She has put 1,800 litres of oil in it, the cost of which came to more than £1,000. She could do that without thinking too much about it. Too many families in rural Scotland do not have the opportunity to make the choice to fill their tanks to the brim. They buy in smaller quantities because they have less money. When you buy in smaller quantities, you pay more. As part of that procurement exercise, my wife phoned seven companies. She found that the difference between the top bid and the bottom bid on the fuel for her tank came to around 7p a litre. People who buy small amounts pay substantially more.
My constituency is not one in which the numbers suggest that we have a major problem. In the various areas of my constituency, the percentage of children in poverty ranges from a peak of 17 per cent in Fraserburgh and district to a bottom figure of 8 per cent. Not a single area of Glasgow, including its prosperous areas, has a child poverty figure that is as low as the highest figure in my constituency. The lowest figure for an area of Glasgow is 18 per cent, whereas the highest in my constituency is 17 per cent.
We know that there is huge disparity across Scotland, but in rural areas, which constitute a great deal of my constituency, there is hidden poverty. There are people who live in rural areas where public transport is relatively poor, where fuel oil—an expensive form of heating—is relied on and where children are suffering accordingly.
Some of the figures that are cited in the arguments on poverty are quite staggering. The fact that five families in the United Kingdom—that is the number of fingers on my hand—have the same amount of money as one fifth of the UK’s population shows how skewed the distribution of economic resources is.
If we become disconnected from the concerns of our constituents and the concerns of the poorer people in Scotland, we make poor decisions. I think that there are too many poor parents involved in parliamentary decision making. When I say “poor parents”, I mean parents who outsource their responsibility for the education of their children to schools such as Eton and Harrow. To me, that is poor parenting. The people who come out of that process are not necessarily to be blamed, but they have little understanding of the reality of the lives of too many ordinary people. We need more people who are connected with and grounded in real life to be in a position to make the kind of decisions that will support people.
I congratulate those who have been involved in the launch of the Scotland’s outlook website. As politicians, part of our job is to articulate complex subjects in simple and accessible ways. By presenting the impact of poverty in the form of a weather chart and a simple-to-use website, a familiar model—one that people see on the telly every night—has been used to carry a complex message to a wide audience. I warmly congratulate all the organisations involved—and James Dornan, for bringing the debate to the chamber.
17:29
I congratulate James Dornan on bringing his motion to the Parliament and I pay my compliments to the organisations that are mentioned in it, which have been involved in developing the campaign.
It is not my intention to disagree with much—if anything—that has been said in the debate so far. In fact, I fully support many of the measures that have already been described. I intend to talk about the things that have not been mentioned, because what has been described until now is not the whole picture.
It is a fact that welfare will always have a significant role in supporting the least well off in society, but we must not make the mistake of believing that it is the only opportunity that exists to help people out of poverty. The old saying is that it is not a handout that they need—it is a hand up. We should always remember that.
It is perhaps sad that there is a poverty of ambition in some sectors—and, more often, a poverty of opportunity—that prevents the least well off in our society from making their way into a position in which they can control their own life and income. For that reason, it is important that we take a broad approach and ensure that we listen to many other people, including the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth, who spoke at length in the previous debate about how we can work our way to a point at which we can genuinely expect better standards of living through economic growth.
There is also plenty of opportunity in Scotland to develop new industries. We need to work on that in order to create jobs.
There is a contrast—not the one that James Dornan drew between Scotland and London—that can be drawn constructively right here in Scotland, between Scotland’s regions. Some of the wealthiest areas in the country are in Scotland and our failure to ensure that the wealth that has been created in some parts of the Scottish economy has benefited the whole of Scotland and its people is the primary cause of the imbalances that we see.
Do not make the mistake of thinking that I am supporting the unprecedented socioeconomic and geographical redistribution of wealth through taxation that the Scottish Government appears to be planning. The Scottish Government seems to talk about that regularly. I want to take the genuine opportunity that we have to ensure that we get Scotland’s unemployed into the jobs that we are creating in the Scottish economy. That means that we have to address issues such as labour mobility and we have to ensure that we provide the necessary affordable housing in areas in which there are jobs, not simply where there is a need for affordable housing. By taking a combined approach in which we deal with the welfare issues and the broader economic issues, we are already at a point at which we can see unemployment in Scotland dropping at a significantly higher rate than it has been dropping and people being able to take control of their lives and end the culture of dependency.
There is no greater sentence than a sentence to a life in dependency. I do not like to see people giving in to poverty of ambition. We need to take notice of the motion and support the causes that are mentioned in it, but we also need to ensure that we never forget that there is a strong economic driver that will guide us away from poverty and ensure that Scotland’s people do better from our economy in the future than they have in the past.
17:33
I, too, welcome the debate and applaud James Dornan for bringing it forward with the support of the sponsors. However, I have one issue with the motion. I say this with the deepest commitment to and regard for the great and hard work that the vast majority of third sector organisations in Scotland do. The motion says:
“poverty is currently the biggest issue for the third sector in Scotland”.
I believe that poverty may be the single biggest issue for all of Scotland. However, it is right, of course, that we are able to size and scope the problem to draw back the curtains, reveal the stage on which poverty is the play, and see how many populate that stage.
This is no place for our version of “Les Misérables”. I again commend James Dornan for securing the debate. I also commend the third sector for using every vehicle that it can—Scotland’s outlook is a key one—to bring home to everyone the everyday fight and the struggle of decent people and to dispense with the stigma and the opprobrium that come in the name of poverty. The cold pensioner, the hungry child, the immobility of the immobile and the disabled, and the despair of anxious parents have no place in one of the planet’s wealthiest countries.
However, we are not wealthy in all ways, and until we bridge and cross the chasm of poverty, we will not achieve the goal that we share. As has been mentioned, the gap between the rich and the poor is offensive; it is obscene. There is no real wealth in a United Kingdom or in a Scotland where, according to Oxfam and as Stewart Stevenson mentioned, the UK’s richest five families have more wealth than a fifth of the entire UK population. Obscenity comes not just in that but in many forms, none more so than the gap between the rich and the poor in the United Kingdom. That will not be the case in a new Scotland—not in my name.
There is little plausibility in us talking about increasing Scotland’s wealth unless we are very clear about how we plan to distribute that income and wealth. The mechanism or vehicle that is the source of tonight’s motion clarifies and sets out very clearly just how serious the problem is.
I was told very early on in my political career that the objective should be to create a free and cohesive society in which the ultimate objective was the maximisation of happiness for each member in it—not wealth, but happiness.
I was raised in a prefab in Dundee. We did not have a lot of money or wealth but it was not real poverty and we had a lot of happiness.
Is the member aware that, in the national constitution of Bhutan, the primary objective is to deliver gross national happiness?
In fact, I was aware of the King of Bhutan’s direction to his people that that should be the objective. I am not sure whether we will import all the King of Bhutan’s objectives, but that would certainly be one of them.
We need information and I applaud what Scotland outlook strives to do to allow us to see what is on that stage. As we see what is there, let us remember how much money we spend on weapons of mass destruction, for example. That is almost an even bigger obscenity.
Let us together seek to accept a growing economy in which each and every one shares in its growth; where there is a greater participation in and a sharing out from that economic growth; where there is a welfare system that is there to be a safety net and not a safety harbour; where we restore dignity as we eliminate poverty; where we secure the worth of people in work; and where we as politicians in Scotland secure joint and concerted action as opposed to saying that it is somebody else’s fault, although it may start there. Let us not rest until the stage is empty.
17:38
I, too, congratulate James Dornan on securing the debate, given the commitments that this Government has made to tackling poverty.
I very much welcome the launch of Scotland’s outlook and I hope that it will spread awareness across Scotland of the serious issues that it identifies. As a Government we are supporting and working with third sector organisations, many of which are part of the Scotland’s outlook campaign, to tackle poverty. We will continue to work with them.
As Jackie Baillie said, we all have to work together. The Scottish Government is working very closely with the third and local sectors and every organisation possible to tackle poverty. Everyone in the chamber agrees that it is an affront to our society that, in a rich country such as Scotland, we see so many people in poverty.
Scotland’s outlook is focusing minds on what poverty really means. In fact, that is brought home to me when I buy a £2 cup of coffee—and that is cheap for a cup of coffee these days—and sometimes leave it because it does not have enough froth. That £2 could keep someone above the breadline. We should all be aware that, to some people, £2 is a huge amount of money and can make a huge difference to their lives. However, I want those people to have a lot more than that, and we are working towards that aim.
Last month, the Deputy First Minister announced £2.5 million for the Child Poverty Action Group, Macmillan Cancer Support, One Parent Families Scotland and the Poverty Alliance to deliver a number of projects, including providing advice to people dealing with the impact of welfare reform and advice on managing debts and household budgets; encouraging employers to adopt the Scottish living wage, of which I will say a bit more in response to Jackie Baillie; and engaging communities in tackling poverty. Those projects are all important and show that we are working together on this matter.
The Scottish Government was the first to introduce the Scottish living wage in all sectors for which it has direct responsibility and we are funding the Poverty Alliance to promote the Scottish living wage to employers throughout the country. However, under European law, we cannot put the Scottish living wage into the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Bill because it is higher than the UK minimum wage. As Jackie Baillie is aware, the Deputy First Minister has made it very clear that we intend to issue statutory guidance to ensure that the living wage can be put into contracts, and we are working very hard to ensure that that happens. The Scottish Government is absolutely committed to the living wage.
We are involving third sector organisations in shaping our approach to tackling child poverty. For example, the ministerial advisory group that we have established to develop the child poverty strategy contains representatives of most of the organisations that I have already mentioned, including the Child Poverty Action Group, One Parent Families Scotland, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Business in the Community, to name but a few. We need those organisations to work with us if we are to get this right.
As was mentioned in the previous debate, Scotland is a wealthy nation. We are energy rich, our workforce is highly skilled, our reputation for innovation is long established and Scottish businesses are competing at the highest level worldwide. However, as we have heard, we all know constituents who are struggling to pay housing costs, particularly after the introduction of the bedroom tax, people who are relying on food banks to feed themselves and their families, and people who are struggling to make ends meet as the cost of living increases.
To reduce pressure on household budgets and put more money in people’s pockets, the Scottish Government is defending and extending core universal services, rights and benefits through the social wage; for example, it has abolished tuition fees and introduced free prescriptions and eye tests. On the latter point, I am absolutely opposed to the Conservative proposal to do away with free prescriptions. In my previous job, I saw many people on very low incomes and incapacity benefit—or what is now called employment and support allowance—who still had to pay for a huge number of prescriptions. Because they were left with the decision of how many prescriptions they were able to get one month and how many the next, they were almost playing Russian roulette. That certainly did not help the health service or the individual, and I do not want to see that sort of thing again.
We are increasing the provision of nursery education, and we are spending £220 million on utilities and energy efficiency measures. The latest published figures show a fall in the levels of poverty and fuel poverty; indeed, had we not taken various measures, more people would have been in fuel poverty than is the case today. However, although we should be pleased that, since this Government came into power in 2007, child poverty has fallen from 21 to 15 per cent, the figure is still far too high. None of us wants that level of poverty, and we know that the figure is only going to rise because of decisions that have been taken at Westminster.
I welcome the partnership approach that we have taken to mitigating those UK Government decisions on welfare and benefits. I accept that not everybody who is in poverty is in receipt of benefits, but we have seen people being pushed into poverty by the cuts in the working tax credit. The cuts in child benefit can take £1,000 off a family in a year. Yet, had previous Governments increased the minimum wage in line with inflation, a family could be as much as £600 a year better off.
We are doing what we can. We are spending at least £258 million to mitigate the UK Government’s decisions, but we should not have to divert money away from other services to deal with the consequences of policies that we do not want in Scotland. We could have used that money for other things.
I have set out a range of actions that the Scottish Government is taking within our existing powers to tackle poverty. I assure the chamber that we will continue to work with all those organisations, including the partners in Scotland’s outlook, to tackle poverty in Scotland, which is something that we must do together. Nevertheless, I think that there is a better way. Alex Johnstone talked about creating wealth and making better use of Scotland’s economy. I believe that we can do that, but only when we have full control of Scotland’s economy. That is the way ahead if we truly want to deal with poverty in Scotland. In the meantime, we will continue to work with all the organisations. I and the Scottish Government are committed to doing everything that we can to reduce child poverty. I find it an affront to see people in poverty when we are such a wealthy nation.
To the organisations that have produced the Scotland’s outlook website, I say that it is a great website. We should not need it, but it is good that it is there. We all need to think about poverty in our local communities and how we can continue to work together to tackle it.
Meeting closed at 17:46.Previous
Decision Time