Chamber and committees

We remain committed to addressing the significant challenges that disabled people are facing following decades of austerity and a cost of living crisis. This year, we committed £6.1 billion to benefits, including an additional £300 million for adult disability payment. That represents an investment of more than £1.1 billion over and above what we receive from the UK Government.

However, it is clear that disabled people continue to face significant barriers. That is why we committed to delivering the disability equality plan, which lays the foundations for meaningful change. The limitations of our devolved budget mean that it is not always possible to meet the full extent of everyone’s ambitions in this first phase. However, we will continue to work with disabled people’s organisations to build towards a fairer Scotland.

I understand the member’s frustrations, and I commend the work that she did on the bill. I reassure her that we are not delaying. I have already outlined the investment and some of the tasks that we are taking forward, and we will continue to progress that work.

The Scottish Government’s position is that of the law. In law, people are either male or female.

The Scottish Government did not claim that. The Scottish Government recently updated its guidance for public bodies on collecting data on sex and gender to include a coding framework for free-text responses. The framework is there to help official statistics producers to categorise people who identify as trans and have completed an open-response question about their trans status. The categories were developed on the basis of the most common responses to the question in the 2022 census. The framework should not be interpreted to mean that there are a particular number of genders; it should be used only as a guide to classify responses to the recommended trans status question in surveys.

I can give the member that assurance. We introduced the pension age disability payment, which is worth between £290 and £434 a month to people of state pension age who are disabled. The child winter heating payment will help households with severely disabled children to manage the additional costs that they face this winter.

We have secured the agreement of energy suppliers, consumer organisations and DPOs to co-design a social tariff mechanism to evidence its viability. We also reopened the independent living fund, helping up to 1,000 more disabled people to access the support that they need.

I do not have the time to do so, unfortunately.

Being mindful of time, I would like to mention that the UK Government has a role to play in this matter. There is clear evidence that the policies of the previous UK Government, such as the two-child limit, which was mentioned by Marie McNair, are actively pushing vulnerable families into deepening poverty, and that more and more households are affected by that. Other members have mentioned the work of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Presiding Officer, I know that my allocated time is coming to an end. I am proud of the action that we have taken. Challenge poverty week is a powerful reminder of both the reality of poverty and the fact that it is not inevitable. By working together across all Governments and sectors and with people with lived experience, we can bring about lasting change.

I thank Paul O’Kane for bringing this important debate to the chamber. I thank members for their speeches and I will try to respond to as many of them as possible.

Listening to what has been said today and reflecting on the many activities that are happening this week reinforces for me the point that Paul O’Kane made that tackling poverty is a collective effort and a national mission. I, too, am grateful to the hundreds of third sector organisations that are working tirelessly to support and advocate for those in poverty, often providing lifeline support to those who need it most.

Ending child poverty is this Government’s foremost priority, but we can achieve that only by tackling the deep-rooted causes of inequalities in our society and ensuring that every community can thrive. Despite an incredibly challenging fiscal context, we have continued to invest around £3 billion each year since 2022-23 on policies that tackle child poverty and protect people from the effects of the cost of living crisis. Those policies include the Scottish child payment, which is providing absolutely essential support in that respect. Indeed, Ruth Boyle of the Poverty Alliance, who I know is in the chamber today, told the Social Justice and Social Security Committee that the payment is having a clear impact on parents’ ability to provide the essentials that their children require. Meghan Gallacher made some very legitimate comments about food insecurities and I will consider her proposals.

Our policies include free bus travel for more than 2 million people, support for young and old people with disabilities to access essential services and live fuller lives, and helping people to keep warm in winter with guaranteed support through our winter heating payment for those on low incomes, including those on pension credit and other relevant benefits.

We are delivering support to those who need it most. Scottish Government modelling, which was published in February, estimates that this Government’s policies will keep 100,000 children out of relative poverty in 2024-25.

I will now take some time to refer to members’ speeches. I heard several calls for fairer funding for the third sector, and we are committed to developing that approach, which provides clarity and stability in order to secure the sector’s resilience and grow its capacity.

However, it is important to recognise that multiyear funding is challenging to deliver in the current context because any commitments will, inevitably, reduce flexibility in future years. Where possible, we aim to increase the number of multiyear grant offers to third sector organisations.

Housing was mentioned by Paul O’Kane, Collette Stevenson and Pam Duncan-Glancy. It is critical to tackling poverty, which is why we declared a housing emergency in May and have been working at pace since then to take urgent action. We have committed £100 million to grow investment and support the construction of around 2,800 mid-market rent homes, and we have invested £22 million in the charitable bond programme to support more than 150 new affordable homes.

Paul O’Kane’s motion mentions ethnic minorities, and we acknowledge that too many people from ethnic minority backgrounds are living in poverty. We are taking wide-ranging action to tackle the deep-rooted inequalities. That includes investing £6.3 million through our equality and human rights fund across 2021-25 to support race equality and anti-racism organisations, such as BEMIS Scotland, the Minority Ethnic Carers of People Project and Amina—the Muslim Women’s Resource Centre, to provide targeted support for ethnic minority communities, including advice, advocacy and training.

The Scottish Government also recognises the lived experience and reality of disabled people and the multiple barriers that they face, as well as the fact that real change is needed. Once again, I thank Jeremy Balfour for his articulate and impassioned work on that issue, which he raises continually, as he should.

We continue to work closely with disabled people’s organisations to develop and implement a plan that is informed by the lived experience of disabled people, and I have been attending such meetings very recently. The Government shares Jeremy Balfour’s commitment to improving outcomes, and we will carefully consider the detail of the bill that he referred to.

We wrote to update stakeholders on the Scottish Government’s work on inclusive communications on 14 August 2024. The letter shared the decision to produce enhanced guidance, tools and training to support public authorities to improve their use of inclusive communication. That, in turn, should help them to better perform their general equality duty.

My decision was informed by careful consideration of what we believe would make the most impact. We have since confirmed funding for that work, and officials have begun preparations for a scoping exercise on resources and gaps.

I note that Neil Bibby has been consistent on the issue and has raised it many times on his constituent’s behalf. Now that I am five months into the job, I am happy to take up his challenge and look at the matter.

I thank Maggie Chapman for raising a very interesting point. Obviously, I will need further time to consider that, and I would welcome the two of us getting together to have further discussions on the matter.