Chamber and committees

As people continue to take advantage of the great outdoors, what work has been undertaken on Scotland’s drowning prevention strategy to support safe open-water swimming?

Does the minister agree with me that the UK’s so-called shared prosperity fund will distribute just £32 million around Scotland this year, whereas it is estimated that EU membership would have seen communities around Scotland benefit from funding of £183 million? Does he further agree that that adds financial insult to democratic injury for the people of Scotland?

To ask the Scottish Government how measures in the water safety action plan will support awareness of water safety among school pupils. (S6O-00964)

Thank you, Presiding Officer, for giving me the time today to bring to the chamber my first members’ business debate. Less than a year ago, I never thought that I would be standing here as the first woman of colour to be elected to the Scottish Parliament. Having come from a very modest family background, I am well aware of the importance that benefits can have in supporting families at times of unemployment and redundancy.

I put on record my thanks to the research team at the Medical Research Council and to the chief scientist office, which funds the social and public health sciences unit of the University of Glasgow, which is based in my constituency. Glasgow university has a long pedigree of developing and applying the latest methods of multidisciplinary research, in order to identify mechanisms that can bring about change, and of developing and assessing policies and programmes to improve health and reduce inequalities.

The motion in my name is based on research that was recently published in the Journal of Social Policy by Drs Marcia Gibson, Serena Pattaro and Nick Bailey. I hope that Marcia and Serena will shortly be able to join us in the public gallery to hear the debate.

That research was one of the most comprehensive reviews of the international quantitative research evidence on the labour market and the wider impacts of benefit sanctions. The body of qualitative research has already established that intensified sanctions and conditionality have had important implications for public health and health inequalities. The new scoping review reported positive impacts for employment, but the research also reported negative impacts for job quality and stability in the longer term, along with increased transitions to non-employment or economic inactivity.

Today, I will focus on three important issues that arise from the study. First, benefit sanctions mask the impact that they have on children and young people through no fault of their own. The United Kingdom Parliament’s Work and Pensions Committee reported in 2018:

“Children play no part in a failure to comply with conditionality, yet when a sanction is imposed they feel the effects just as acutely.”

How can anyone penalise a child because of the consequences of a parent or guardian’s actions, over which the child has no control? It is heartening to know that the Scottish Government took a different path when employment services were devolved. Gone were the mandatory schemes and in came the new Scottish approach of dignity, respect and fairness, in order to improve outcomes.

My second issue concerns benefit sanctions and a subsequent reduction in welfare payments. They are a false economy and often hide the true cost to Government of increased crime, poorer physical and mental health and an increased need for social care. The wider impact that poverty has on individuals, families and communities can manifest itself, for example, in family breakdown and, sadly, an increase in the number of children entering the care system.

Sir Robert Devereux, the former Department for Work and Pension permanent secretary, admitted as much when he was asked whether the reduction of the welfare budget under his watch had led to increased costs for other Whitehall departments, such as health and justice. He did not know. He was concerned only with reducing DWP spending. Therefore, while the DWP was being rather smug at its success in cutting welfare costs, other departments were faced with picking up the pieces and paying heavily for it. Who knows what the true cost to society is? Members just need to think about the huge rise in food banks since benefit sanctioning really took off.

The third issue that I will focus on is a request—actually, it is a demand. The DWP needs to give researchers access to data in order to ensure that there is robust independent scrutiny of the results of benefit sanctions. How many sanctions have been issued? How long are they? What impact have sanctions had on job searching activities? What was the quality of the jobs that were found? How long did they last? How many people took a low-quality job in order to escape that draconian regime? Originally, sanctions could have lasted anything from six months to three years. Although Amber Rudd reduced the maximum time to six months, that is still a longer sentence than people receive for some criminal convictions.

I draw members’ attention to the 94 reviewed studies from across the world. What would give us the 95th? The UK releasing appropriate data to allow independent research to be conducted. Today I have written a letter to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, calling on her department to promptly grant access to anonymised data from the claims and sanctions histories of the Department for Work and Pensions to the research team in Glasgow so that its inquiry can be completed. I encourage my colleagues across the chamber to add their names to that letter, which I will issue shortly.

Since 2010, the coalition and successive Conservative Governments have claimed that the Government has been helping people to find and use open Government data. However, despite numerous requests, freedom of information requests and assurances given to successive work and pensions committees that such data would be released, it is still not available. I ask myself why. What is it that they do not want anyone to find out? Why would they not want robust independent scrutiny to validate their evidence and confirm their success?

This Parliament has debated the impact of benefit sanctions for nearly 10 years now. Despite a Scottish approach, new voluntary employment support services and the new Scottish child payment, the management of social security support for the unemployed is reserved. Reserved it may be, but the sanctions have a knock-on effect for the Scottish Government.

It is time for us to be open with our data. It is time for the UK Government to step up to the mark and be open with its data. Only then can we truly learn from its analysis of what works, what does not work and—literally—who pays for failure. Once again, children bear the brunt of adult decision making.

I look forward to contributions to the debate from across the chamber.

The amendment of rule 126 to add that

“tailgating will be enforced by police as a dangerous and careless driving offence”

has great potential to improve the experience of road users.

A report by the Co-op from September 2020 highlighted that

“over half of young drivers feel pressured to drive faster by other motorists”.

Does the minister agree that that crackdown on inconsiderate driving is a welcome step?

There is an old 18th century nursery rhyme that will be familiar to many, which goes:

“There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.
She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do.
She gave them some broth without any bread;
And whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.”

That was once considered a harmless and, some might say, amusing rhyme but, on close reading, it sends shivers down the spine of most people. If such a controlling approach to children was practised anywhere, it would be considered outrageous then and outdated now.

On 5 February 2020, a promise was made. The Promise has been guided by more than 5,500 individual voices—voices that should have been listened to a long time ago. As grown-ups, we do not have the monopoly on wisdom. Children’s opinions and views are valuable—indeed, they are essential—when their support needs are considered.

By radically rethinking our attitude towards those in Scotland’s care system and fulfilling the Scottish Government’s promise to place love and compassion at the centre of every child’s journey, we can remind care-experienced children that they are wonderful and exceptional, and that they should be treated not as exceptions but as equals in their right to thrive.

Standing here today, I remember sitting in packed assemblies as a teacher and listening to attendance awards, at which remarks such as, “Well done, P5s—100 per cent attendance this week—but what happened in P7?”, would be made. I have uncomfortable memories of a misplaced means of encouraging attendance that actually causes harm by shaming some of our most vulnerable children, who might have complex reasons for being late and who need our help and support.

We know that care-experienced children are more than twice as likely to be excluded from school and to experience homelessness. Imagine a child running through the school gates with a schoolbag on their back. Any child’s schoolbag might contain their homework, a pencil case or a packed lunch, but I want us to remember that care-experienced children often carry the emotional baggage of trauma, stress and anxiety, and it is our duty to unpack their complex worries and eliminate their burden.

When the independent care review reported its conclusions in February 2020, it found that the care system did not

“universally uphold the rights of children”

and did not

“provide the context for loving relationships to flourish.”

Nobody could have anticipated the scale of the struggle ahead, yet the Scottish Government has not wavered in its commitment to improving the lives of Scotland’s children, and has recognised the need for a holistic, multi-agency approach that will turn words into actions.

I want to put on record the invaluable work of third sector organisations such as Barnardo’s and Aberlour, which have long appreciated the importance of early intervention and family support in ensuring that no child slips through our arms.

I welcome the £500 million for a whole family wellbeing fund and the continuation of the £4 million Promise partnership fund to help to improve the lives of young people who are in or on the edges of care. However, although that investment is welcome, we also need to bring about a mind shift in adults’ attitudes, and to be open to the voices of children and what they are telling us. We can no longer accept the old adage of children being seen and not heard.

As we move to enshrine in Scots law the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, our approach to and understanding of the process of supporting children will require a step change in our culture. Quite rightly, the Promise asks us to rethink how children are supported. Children deserve fun, love and a childhood, not a crash course in adult responsibilities.

I am sure that we will.

There is a big area to explore there.

I have one final question. School inspectors will assess schools, and you recommend that they should be completely independent, but who will inspect the inspectors?

I have been listening with great interest all morning. A lot of what you said resonates with my experience and that of the teachers I speak to. I welcome the fact that mainstreaming of the learner voice throughout the educational landscape is at the heart of the report. Teachers and parents have wanted that for a long time and we do not always see it.

I will carry on asking about inspections and open that topic up a wee bit. Having been through inspections, I declare an interest. The process can be, and often is, stressful. It can cause enormous anxiety and extra burdens on schools and pupils. How can the school inspection system be more supportive of continuing quality improvement ? How do we make it so that it is not just an event that happens, which people put everything into and then recover from? How does inspection become more integral to quality improvement?

I agree with a lot of what you said, especially on the make-up of the inspectors. We should be mindful of the need to have people who have not been out of the classroom for too long and who have credibility among the workforce. It is easy to forget what teaching is like, so we need to retain that connection.

On mainstreaming the learner’s voice and wanting to put learners and teachers at the heart of everything, one student said:

“I think if students had an opportunity to be involved in the inspections it would look a lot different”.

I want to explore that. How can we incorporate that in an inspection system? Is there scope for young people to co-design a future inspection system or its remit?