Chamber and committees

Yes.

That is helpful for the committee. I hand back to you, convener.

It is not—

I would like to ask how you are supporting the development of greater intersectional equalities competence across portfolios and public bodies. You touched on it slightly earlier, but is there anything that you would like to expand on?

I note that the Scottish Women’s Budget Group highlighted four examples of policy areas where information on equalities consideration is lacking: the Scottish welfare fund, maternal health funds, carer support plans and housing and homelessness. Minister, you touched on housing, but could you give a bit of background as to why the information is lacking? Perhaps your officials will pop in as well.

I am grateful to my colleague Kenny Gibson for securing this motion for debate in the chamber. Like me, Mr Gibson has concerns about the negative impacts that the PPP and PFI burden has inflicted on the public sector. It is yet another real example of Labour’s desire to replicate Tory party policy, and the debate serves as a stark reminder of why the Labour Party cannot be trusted to manage Scotland’s finances.

PFI and PPP contracts have left a harmful and lasting legacy in Scotland. They were first introduced under the Tory Westminster Government in 1990 and fully embraced by successive Labour Governments in Westminster and Holyrood. However, although they were posed as effective solutions, they have instead burdened Scotland’s public services and taxpayers with unsustainable financial sums for decades. According to Professor Ciaran Connolly,

“They produced projects with assets worth approximately £60 billion, which are costing the taxpayer £170 billion—that’s a gap of £110 billion between what the assets are worth and what the taxpayer is paying for them.”

Costs end up getting passed on to the taxpayer, which, as Professor Connolly has said, can constrain

“what authorities such as the NHS can spend on essential services, forcing them to reduce budgets accordingly. It has also created pressure to reduce project costs, leading to poorer infrastructure.”

That impacts on local council budgets, too. In my constituency, 37.9 per cent of council tax in East Dunbartonshire and 41.2 per cent of council tax in West Dunbartonshire goes on PPP payments.

Labour’s financial mismanagement has had severe consequences, and its wasteful PFI deals have foisted a £30 billion repayments bill on Scottish taxpayers, forcing us all to pay many times more than the original cost of the projects. The funds that are used to pay for those agreements would have been much better spent on our public services to support education or tackle child poverty.

Instead, it was left to the SNP to fix Labour’s mess. Under the SNP Scottish Government, we moved away from that model to a model under which, importantly, surpluses do not go into the pockets of big investors, as Labour allowed. One perfect example is hospital car parking charges, which are a terrible legacy of PFI; the Scottish Government scrapped the charges that were in place as a result of Labour PFI deals.

Scotland continues to pay extortionate amounts for Labour’s incompetence. The 2023 figures show that the amount still owed under PPP for hospitals and schools is £15.4 billion, which is not even half of Labour’s eye-watering total PPP bill.

The contracts are not just an enormously expensive way to borrow—they are often inflexible. A 2019 report by the JPI Media investigations team found that schools, hospitals and police forces have been locked

“in the iron grip of contractors”,

and are paying extortionate extra charges. Examples in that report included a school being charged £25,000 for three parasols and a hospital trust paying £5,500 for a new sink. The contracts are extremely profitable for the private sector, but not for the taxpayer.

Nearly 18 years after Labour was kicked out of office in Scotland, we are still paying a heavy price for the disastrous PPP contracts. The Scottish taxpayers have had to shell out enormous sums of money above the actual cost of projects, while PPP contractors hoard huge profits. It is clear that PPP contracts have been disastrous for Scotland’s public finances, so it is welcome that the Scottish Government recognises those options for what they are—extremely poor value for money and certainly not in the best interests of the Scottish people.

We cannot have a round-table discussion on pensions without mentioning the women against state pension inequality. They have obviously been badly let down by the UK Government. Do you have any insight into how their situation might impact on pension poverty levels?

I understand that mixed-age couples that include someone who is of pension age and someone who is under it are being directed to universal credit as opposed to pension credit. Do the witnesses have any views on that, in respect of entitlements?

Good morning. It is great to see everyone today; thank you for your time.

Our first theme is pension age income trends. We know that pensioner poverty levels were falling until 2008, when then they started to rise again. By 2015, relative poverty was at 15 per cent and has remained around that figure. I am interested in hearing the reasons for that, the main drivers of pensioner poverty today and the most effective routes out of it.

In 2023, 98 per cent of those of pension age were in receipt of state pension. To what extent are state pension levels the elephant in the room when it comes to pensioner poverty? I note that recent research from the House of Commons library asserts that the United Kingdom devotes a smaller percentage of gross domestic product to state pension compared to other advanced economies.

To start off with, then, does any of the witnesses have any comments on the reasons for and the impact of pensioner poverty and what requires to change in relation to UK pension policy? I will just pop that out there to whoever wants to start.

It is about breaking the stigma, as has been said, and Richard Gass mentioned the barriers. People could not even buy bread and milk for £3.15. Should we just change the income thresholds and let people claim?