Chamber and committees

Thank you, minister; that was very helpful.

Our next theme is financial support for kinship carers. Our first question comes from Natalie Don, who joins us remotely.

Thank you very much. We have no further questions, minister, but we look forward to hearing updates on the work of the kinship care collaborative and on how the guidance is being shaped to ensure that learning and best practice are passported across all 32 local authorities and that the allowance is set at the level at which we want it to be set. Again, I thank you for coming along this morning.

That concludes the public part of this morning’s meeting. Because Parliament is in recess next week, the committee’s next meeting will be on Thursday 21 April. I invite members who are joining us remotely to leave the meeting and to join us on Teams.

Thank you very much, minister. We will now move to questions from members. We have two themes: the first is on uprating for inflation, and the second is on increases not related to uprating.

Pam Duncan-Glancy, who is joining us remotely, will start us off on theme 1, and she will be followed by Marie McNair, who is also joining us remotely.

Is that okay with you, Pam?

All right. Everybody’s else’s questions have been answered, so we will have Marie McNair’s question.

I, too, thank my colleague Kaukab Stewart for securing this important debate.

First, I want to take a moment to remind us all how we got to where we are today. The former Tory Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, said:

“Alongside what we have already done with the mandatory work programme and our tougher sanctions regime, this marks the end of the something-for-nothing culture”.

I repeat:

“the ending of the something-for-nothing culture”.

Let that sink in. That treats those of us who have been recipients of UK social security as if we have been taking something that we do not deserve—as if we are feckless, lazy and grubbing.

The stigma of that experience still lurks in the recesses of my mind. Thinking back to when I used my income support to buy my baby son’s babygrows from charity shops, I was not thinking about the circular economy nor about reducing, reusing and recycling. I was trying to figure out how to make the small amount of money that I had go further, in a time before baby boxes. Wow! How 24-year-old me could have done with one of our amazing levellers, the baby box. That, too, is seen by people in some quarters as being “something-for-nothing.

We should make no mistake about it: benefit sanctioning is a political choice. We have yet to be presented with any real and tangible hard facts that show that removing people’s only source of income—income at a level that is so low that it is already recognised as being the minimum amount that a person needs in order to survive—has any positive outcome. It is a choice that politicians have made and it is a culture that they have created, in our UK benefits system. It is punitive and punishing—all stick, and scant carrot.

I worked as a senior caseworker for a member of Parliament, and I will never forget the benefit sanctions cases that we had coming into the office—they were people who were in desperate need of support. I did not see, standing in front of me, people for whom hunger and destitution were an appropriate punishment for their missing an appointment—for being on a late-running bus, for being ill, for having the audacity to have to collect kids from school at the same time as a DWP appointment, or for not showing evidence of 35 hours of job searching. Who knew that a person could actually demonstrate 35 hours of job searching? That blows my mind.

I saw many people who were experiencing multiple and complex trauma being retraumatised by a system that was designed to be hostile, designed to end the “something-for-nothing culture” and designed to reduce people to being so hungry that they would open a can of soup to drink it cold, straight from the tin, in a food bank, because they had not eaten for days and their pittance of a hardship payment was gone within seconds of their receiving it.

What kind of country creates a system that is designed to punish people for being poor and for having everyday real-life situations, like those that I have outlined, happen? I ask members to imagine that, each time they missed an appointment or did not manage to finish something in the time allotted, they lost a full month’s pay. Now, I ask them to imagine losing six months’ pay while they are living a chaotic life that is beset by substance use and trauma, and is built on a foundation of adverse childhood experiences. Is that someone who is living the high life and getting something for nothing? I proffer the radical thought that the life choices of that individual would be continually knocked, and that the imposition of harsh sanctioning would, in fact, only add to and exacerbate the deep poverty that they are experiencing.

We can contrast that with our Scottish social security system, which is being created with dignity and fairness at its heart. It is lifting people out of poverty and supporting folks, instead of punishing them.

As a former front-line homelessness worker, I welcome the cabinet secretary outlining how the Scottish Government is working to tackle homelessness. However, does she share my frustration that actions that the United Kingdom Government has taken—particularly the deeply damaging £20 per week cut to universal credit—risk undermining our efforts?

Before I embark on my speech in support of the Scottish Government’s efforts to tackle child poverty, I want to put a human face to what we are discussing here today. As a child, I had to face poverty twice in my life before the age of nine. The extreme downturn in Scotland’s manufacturing fortunes meant that we became economic migrants in 1980, when, at the young age of 23, my parents packed me and my two-year-old brother into a jumbo jet bound for Canada at Prestwick airport.

Christmas of 1982 is also seared into my consciousness, as my father had been made redundant and my mother started to work nights in a doughnut shop to make ends meet. The ends never met, and, on that Christmas day, I watched as my mum struggled to make us a meal from the food parcel that we had received from the food bank. With Christmas cartoons on in the background, she served us homemade rice pudding for Christmas dinner with tears rolling down her cheeks as my wee brother pushed it away in disgust. At eight years old, I already knew the immense pressure my parents were under, and I cajoled him into eating the hated rice pudding, as there was nothing else to be had.

That period of food insecurity has affected my relationship with food throughout my entire life. It was a time when, in the absence of free school meals, my mum tried her best to ensure that I had something nutritious to accompany the flask of hot, sugary tea in my lunchbox. I was hyperaware that we were struggling and tried to hide my lunch from my classmates. There will be others in this place who also experienced childhood hunger and deep-seated, poverty-induced worry, and it is up to us to bring that lived experience with us as we make decisions that will have a lasting impact on our youngest and most vulnerable citizens.

As we stand on the precipice of a growing and deepening cost of living crisis, my heart is again filled with dread and worry for those children whose struggles are going to multiply and for those weans who will experience their first encounter with poverty despite their parents’ best efforts and despite the efforts of the SNP Government, which has made it a national mission to turn the tide on centuries of child poverty despite having one hand tied behind its back. Nowhere else on these islands do we see the equivalent of our game-changing Scottish child payment, which is set to be doubled from April and to which an extra £5 is now set to be added by the end of this year. When that is combined with our three best start grants and our best start foods scheme, families will have £10,000 invested in their first child by the Government by the time they turn six. If a family has the dreaded bedroom tax looming over them, we will make sure that that is mitigated, too, which will free up much-needed family income for necessities and help them to secure their home. We are also committed to continuing to build affordable homes faster than anywhere else in the UK as we seek to realise our aim of ending homelessness and its traumatic impacts.

The Child Poverty Action Group’s recent report highlights that, by the time a child is 16, Scottish Government interventions will have reduced the cost of raising that child by 31 per cent—a huge £24,000—despite the UK Tory Government’s implementation of savage welfare cuts, including the short-sighted removal of the £20 universal credit uplift and the regrettable benefit cap, which includes the abhorrent requirement that women disclose rape trauma in order to secure much-needed money for their third child. That tells us everything that we need to know about the Conservatives’ approach to tackling child poverty.

The inaction of the chancellor in yesterday’s spring statement further underlines their total disregard for those families who are most at risk from the volatility of our present situation. If a family cannot afford to top up their prepayment meter or buy enough food, they cannot benefit from the removal of VAT on solar panels. It is a great shame that the chancellor did not follow our lead and uprate social security by 6 per cent, choosing instead to pander to his base. That should be contrasted with the approach of the Scottish Government that has been set out today, which will involve the investment of £10 million per year to mitigate the benefit cap, which disproportionately impacts on lone parents. Surely, that move is welcomed across the chamber.

When my son was a toddler, we struggled to move from benefits back into work, as the transition period meant huge financial hardship for the first few months. Therefore, I am really pleased that today’s announcement shows that the Scottish Government also understands those pressures and that, in 2022-23, it will invest up to £15 million in a new fund to tackle the financial barriers that parents face when they enter the labour market, especially when they do so for the first time.

As the convener of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee, I want to ensure the maximum uptake of our devolved benefits, and I will work on a cross-party basis to ensure that all families who are entitled to help receive it. That could include creating a system that makes automatic awards across social security and local authority payments, which would involve clothing grants and free school meals tying in with the Scottish child payment. The Scottish welfare fund also plays a huge role in tackling poverty that is caused by crisis situations, and I will work to ensure that it is funded and equitable across local authority areas.

All our wee yins deserve the best start and the brightest of futures, and we must do all that we can to support them. I therefore welcome the cabinet secretary’s statement and our updated strategy, which calls on all of us in the public, private and voluntary sectors to work collectively in this most important of endeavours. Imagine what we could do if we were a normal, everyday, common-or-garden independent country with all the levers.

For many rural households in my constituency who are off grid and use oil as their primary source of heating, there are no price-cap protections. Many people are seeing price increases from around 50p to £1.40 per litre, with minimum delivery quotas and payment required on delivery. Does the cabinet secretary agree that the UK Government must intervene to tackle the unregulated heating-oil industry and prevent uncertainty and extreme fuel poverty for rural households?