Chamber and committees

It has been touched on a wee bit already. How reliable is the data to allow rent officers and the tribunal to make an informed decision?

I thank my colleague Stuart McMillan for securing this highly important debate. I know that he has done a lot of work in this regard to support his constituents and raise awareness, and I thank him for that.

I am speaking on behalf of several constituents who have been affected by McClure. As has been mentioned, it is estimated that around 100,000 people across the UK have been impacted by the scandal. The clients are predominantly elderly and, in some cases, vulnerable, too. Many who were impacted were advised that a new will was beneficial, and they were later sold family protection trusts and powers of attorney on the back of that. The cost of that was in the thousands—money that the clients had worked hard for over their lives and could not afford to lose. Since the takeover by Jones Whyte, it is believed that files have been passed over without the express permission of clients, which is a cause for concern among some constituents.

With McClure Solicitors now in administration, thousands of people are left with significant difficulties in accessing assets, because of numerous inaccuracies or failings by McClure. That has caused undue stress, anxiety and financial difficulty for clients and their surviving families, who are often now having to pay extra to remedy those failings. It is a disgrace.

One of my constituents, who gave me permission to share their story, told me:

“I paid McClure to prepare a will and power of attorney for me in 2020. The power of attorney was never registered with the Office of Public Guardian. Jones Whyte Solicitors have taken over from McClure and said that I need to pay again. As a 75-year-old pensioner, frightened to turn my heating up, I am distressed to have to start further payments to yet another law firm.”

Another said:

“My mother was a victim of McClure Solicitors and was encouraged to put her home into a trust and buy a will and a power of attorney for £3,500. It was mis-sold to her, and two of the McClure staff put themselves on the trust as trustees and also changed the title deeds of my mother’s home to name themselves on the deeds without her knowledge. We are now trying to unravel the mess that they have made with the new solicitor, costing further expense to my retired mother.”

Those are just two examples of the several cases that I have received in my office. What links each one is that the victims are elderly, and that some also have serious health conditions. It is utterly unacceptable that they have been put into such stressful financial difficulties at a point in their lives when they should be able to relax and put their feet up.

I back Stuart McMillan’s calls for an inquiry into the firm’s conduct and subsequent collapse to prevent a recurrence of the situation. Unfortunately, it is expected that thousands might be unaware of what has happened and that, as a result, their legal affairs will not be in order. It is therefore vital that, as MSPs, we do what we can to spread awareness, in tandem with the excellent work of the victims of McClure Solicitors campaign. If that awareness raising can be extended to a Scottish Government information campaign, as suggested by Stuart McMillan, that would also have my backing.

How we treat elderly residents says a lot about who we are as people, and it says a lot about our country, too. They deserve to be treated with compassion, honesty and respect, and they should not have been misled. It is vital that we do everything in our power to support those victims as best we can. I am firmly on their side, alongside Stuart McMillan.

As case transfer for carer support payment is likely to be complete in 2025, does the Social Security (Amendment) (Scotland) Bill provide a timely opportunity to introduce a statutory requirement to uprate the carer support payment earnings threshold?

We need an immediate ceasefire and an end to the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.

As a forward-thinking and compassionate nation, we cannot stand by while an obvious genocide happens. The killing of innocent civilians and the brutal slaughter of children must end. The civilian death toll—which stands at around 30,000 people in Gaza, more than 1,000 people in Israel, and more than 300 in the West Bank—is rising daily. The only way to end the suffering is an immediate ceasefire and the release of all hostages and those who have been detained without charge. The relentless suffering that is being faced by the people of Gaza has been weighing on the hearts and minds of so many across the country.

Two days ago, Andrew Gilmour, the United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights from 2016 to 2019, said:

“Israel’s onslaught against Gaza is probably the highest kill rate of any military killing anywhere since the Rwandan genocide in 1994.”

I have joined thousands on the streets to protest and call for an immediate ceasefire, an end to collective punishment and an end to illegal occupation. I am glad to see that, since that, and with the pressure from the Scottish National Party, the new Labour Party has backed calls for a ceasefire—at least of a sort. External pressure does more for Labour at the moment than what is enshrined in its internal principles.

The Tories and the Labour Party made a devastating mistake by opposing a ceasefire in November. Lives have been lost and the death toll has since risen enormously. Their failure to back calls for a ceasefire earlier will be remembered in the history books with their names on it. Yesterday in Westminster, new Labour’s position was appalling. The new Labour cabal came together to deny a motion that called for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the collective punishment of Palestinian people.

“Newsnight” journalist Nicholas Watt said that the House of Commons speaker was left in “no doubt” that new Labour would “bring him down” after the general election unless he allowed a weak new Labour amendment on Gaza. The new Labour junior deputy speaker, Rosie Winterton, was then deployed to defend the indefensible. Like most Labour stitch-ups, it ended in disaster and humiliation, but it was still cheered on by some lapsed Corbynistas in the Parliament who want to be chummed with the arms industry that provides weapons to Israel.

Most of us have never experienced anything close to the level of horror in Gaza, so comments from Dr Salim Ghayyda have stuck with me. Dr Ghayyda grew up in Gaza and he has family there. He now works as a consultant paediatrician in Inverness.

When discussing his family, he said;

“The stories of immense suffering I hear from them every day. Every part of their life turns into an astonishing amount of suffering. There is nothing in their life that you could consider a life, actually. Water is contaminated and they eat one meal a day. The number of children killed is around 12,000 to 14,000. Do you know how many children there are in Inverness? 14,000. Imagine we, the Scottish people, wake up one day and all the children in Inverness have been killed. This is what happened to the children in Gaza. Stop. Enough is enough. Stop this genocide, please.”

Those comments are terrifying. This perpetual cycle of violence has been going on for far too long. We either call for the killing to end or we sit by and let the death total escalate. History will judge us all on that. We need an immediate ceasefire and an end to the collective punishment.

Before I start, I note my entry in the register of members’ interests: until 2022, I was a local authority councillor on West Dunbartonshire Council.

I go to John Mills. How well are the Scottish Government, and the partners that are responsible for working to achieve the aims of the housing to 2040 strategy, involving communities, tenants and residents in the delivery plans?

I want to follow up on a previous comment that Callum Chomczuk made, to see whether I picked you up right. Do you think that rent service Scotland and the tribunal will have the capacity to deal with the challenge that might come?

Have outcomes improved for residents, tenants and the community?

I am the MSP for the Clydebank and Milngavie constituency.

I will not, at the moment. In 2022, the Scottish Government spent more than £1 billion on mitigating Tory cuts. Just think what we could do with that money in an independent Scotland. We could change universal credit, further improve carer and disability benefits, remove the rape clause and the two-child policy, scrap the bedroom tax and end other punitive welfare benefit policies. Those are noble and ambitious goals, but they are also morally the right thing to do.

We should also consider a minimum income guarantee to ensure that everyone in Scotland secures a minimum acceptable standard of living, thereby giving families enough money for housing, food and essentials, so that they can live a dignified, healthy and financially secure life.

With one hand tied behind our back, we are already making significant progress with the social security system by delivering 14 benefits, seven of which, including the Scottish child payment, are available only in Scotland and tackle poverty and reduce inequality. In the end, social security is a human right.

The Westminster Government continues to strip residents of their human rights, but an independent Scotland would have human rights at the core of its policy decisions. That is not something that Labour or the Tories see as a priority. We heard that loud and clear when they refused to scrap the benefit cap but would not cap bankers’ bonuses.

People deserve to be treated with dignity, so a Scottish social security system would be designed with the people of Scotland on the basis of evidence. Social security is an investment in the people of Scotland. With independence, we will deliver a social security system that will transform lives.

I am pleased to speak in this debate about the type of social security system that we could have in an independent Scotland—a social security system with fairness, dignity and respect at its heart, that is humane and compassionate and that recognises that decent levels of support and assistance are essential to help our citizens to thrive.

Today’s debate is important and necessary because the two political parties that aspire to govern at Westminster have failed Scotland. While in office, they have presided over a welfare system that is big on stigma but devoid of compassion. We have seen that in how, for decades, they treated unpaid carers with contempt by not aligning carers allowance with other earnings-replacement benefits—an injustice that was put right by the SNP Government.

We have seen so many other examples: entitlements of 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds being erased; private sector assessments that have caused so much pain and suffering; the young person’s penalty, which means less entitlement for under-25s; an obsession with a sanctions regime that entrenches stigma and promotes poverty; the benefit cap that denies families with children basic levels of subsistence; the bedroom tax that erodes support for paying rent and risks homelessness; and industrial injuries benefits being left unreformed for decades, so that women who are injured in the workplace are denied compensation.

We also see the Westminster Government’s future plans for a controlled Westminster social security system, its refusal to commit to scrapping the two-child policy with its abhorrent rape clause, and its proposed changes to work capability assessments that target many people who are sick and disabled. The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that hundreds of thousands of people could be impacted, potentially losing more than £4,000 per year.

There is no essentials guarantee that would see universal credit being set at a decent amount that would allow families to afford the basics. There is no vision that sees social security as an investment in helping our country to thrive.

Scotland needs real change, which will be secured only with independence. With the Tories or Labour, we will have continuation of a system that sets people up to fail and does not help them to thrive. It is no wonder that the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty condemned the Westminster Government’s shameful record on poverty, saying that the UK’s “grossly insufficient” welfare system is simply not acceptable and might be in violation of international law.