Chamber and committees

The Deputy First Minister well knows that, budget after budget, the Scottish Labour Party has brought to the chamber proposals on how we can accelerate to £12 an hour and £15 an hour. The former finance secretary said that £12 an hour could not be done and consistently refused to engage on those points.

We have long supported efforts to improve childcare. Of course, we support the actions outlined to move forward the work of Baroness Kennedy’s review of misogyny law and support women and families who have experienced baby loss across Scotland. We have heard very powerful contributions across the chamber in that regard.

However, let us be honest: the relaunch of Humza Yousaf’s Government, which is already tired after just six months, is underwhelming. Just 24 hours after the statement, it has been met with a lukewarm response at best from anti-poverty organisations, the third sector and wider civic Scotland. It has been described as “a timid step” in addressing injustice by Save the Children. The Poverty Alliance said that it missed a crucial

“opportunity to turn our shared values of justice and compassion into meaningful action”,

and it fails to meet the challenges described by Shelter Scotland.

The challenges before us are great. We face twin crises: the cost of living and an NHS on its knees. The response to those crises must match the scale of the challenge. Continuity won’t cut it, as someone famously said. However, continuity from the First Minister is exactly what we got.

The reality does not match the rhetoric. Instead of direct action and new interventions, we have a document that is full of pilots, proposals, exploratory work and steering groups, and many of those initiatives are just reannouncements.

The Government’s flagship policy of removing income thresholds for best start payments is a reannouncement of existing policy, and it will do little for those in the deepest poverty. No new spending has been announced on the child payment; the SNP Government is expecting credit for maintaining the status quo.

On the annual recycled pledge on free school meals, that is now delayed until 2026, and it will begin with a limited roll-out. How many times will the Government promise and then not deliver?

It is clear that this is a tired continuity Government that lacks direction. The reality is that the SNP Government is failing and is out of ideas on how to turn the situation in Scotland around. There are clarion calls around Scotland that the Government is going to fail to meet its own statutory poverty targets.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to open this debate for Scottish Labour on equalities in the programme for government, and I will begin with areas of consensus.

As Anas Sarwar outlined in yesterday’s debate, there are areas in the programme that Scottish Labour supports. We have long called for improvements in the pay of social care workers, so finally seeing some progress in that area is to be welcomed, despite our being told repeatedly by the Government—including the First Minister when he was health secretary—that that could not be done.

We have also long supported efforts to improve access to childcare across Scotland, because we know that access to good, high-quality and truly flexible childcare can reduce poverty and support people—especially women—into the workplace.

No.

I mentioned care workers because we know how vital health and social care are to ensuring that everyone in Scotland has the best life that they can, but it seems that health and social care are, at best, an afterthought in the programme for government and, at worst, something that the Government does not actively want to talk about. It took the First Minister 22 minutes to mention the NHS in his speech yesterday, and there is a similar absence in today’s Government motion, in which there is just one sentence about health and social care.

More than 820,000 people are languishing on waiting lists, while more than 7,000 NHS vacancies remain unfilled. There is a crisis in our health service, which is being felt every day by people up and down Scotland. That is the reality under the SNP.

Hard-working staff are crying out for action, so where are the big, bold solutions to help to alleviate the pressure? Where is a renewed recovery and catch-up plan? Where is a meaningful workforce plan? Where is the action to properly fix social care to ensure that people can get out of hospital and live good and well-supported lives in their communities?

Of course, we recognise the reopening of the independent living fund, which we have called on the Government to do in successive programmes for government and budgets. As convener of the cross-party group on learning disability, I know that that will be welcomed, but we want the Government to move faster and further than it is doing with the phased approach that it is taking, so that the fund becomes more sustainable.

However, where is the further action on social care? In its 2021 manifesto, the SNP pledged to abolish non-residential care charges. Time and again, we have called on the Government to honour that commitment to disabled people and their families.

As I have just said, the Government is on track to miss the legally binding poverty reduction targets that have been set. Clarion calls have been made in relation to the fact that the Government is going to miss those targets. [Interruption.] No—I need to make progress.

No organisation has been clearer in making that point than the Fraser of Allander Institute, which has said:

“Missing a statutory target should be a big deal, shouldn’t it? Instead we have had the equivalent of a shrug and a suggestion that the constitutional settlement means we lack the necessary levers.”

We have already heard plenty about the constitutional settlement in today’s debate. We are talking about poverty, on which we can and must do more.

Scottish Labour has offered interventions to tackle the cost of living crisis and to prevent people from experiencing poverty, but they have been ignored by the Government. We have suggested capping the cost of public transport, providing rebates on water bills, implementing mortgage rescue schemes and taking quicker action to pay care workers not £12 but £15 an hour. If the First Minister, the Cabinet and the Deputy First Minister are serious about their offer to listen and work across this chamber, they must engage on our proposals.

Each year, that commitment slips further and further into the parliamentary calendar for delivery.

Today, along with my colleagues, I met campaigners outside Parliament on the issue. Reece, Sandy and Kerry were just some of the people who spoke to me about the huge difference that the removal of non-residential care charges would make for their lives, their wellbeing and their mental health. They told me how disappointed they were not to see that in the programme for government. Therefore, I urge the Government to look again at how we can abolish those charges quickly. We will work constructively with the Government, as campaigners want us to do, to deliver that.

It is clear that the programme for government was billed as a reset moment for Humza Yousaf and a tired SNP Government that has been in power for 16 years but, instead of hitting the reset button, it has been a case of pressing rewind on some announcements and pause on others. The reality is that the people of Scotland, rather than a reset or a rewind, are looking for change. Labour members are ready to rise to that challenge and deliver change.

I move amendment S6M-10343.1, to leave out from “to build” to end and insert:

“, and that no real action has been set out which will reduce child poverty or mitigate the cost of living crisis for thousands of families that are struggling to make ends meet; further notes that the last UK Labour administration lifted 2 million children and pensioners out of poverty, of which 200,000 were children in Scotland, while the last decade of the Scottish National Party (SNP) administration has seen 40,000 more children, and 30,000 more pensioners slide into poverty; notes with concern that almost 9,000 children are languishing in temporary accommodation without a home to call their own because of this SNP administration’s inability to get a handle on the scale of the housing crisis facing Scotland; welcomes the UK Labour Party’s commitment to a new deal for working people within the first 100 days of a UK Labour administration, which will lift children in Scotland out of poverty by delivering a real living wage and improved working conditions, and a fundamental reform of unfair and punitive Universal Credit provisions; condemns the SNP administration’s continued failure to resolve pay disputes with education staff across local authorities in Scotland; regrets that health inequalities are exacerbated by the inertia of this SNP administration; condemns the abandonment of over 820,000 patients stuck on NHS waiting lists for tests and treatment; accepts that this SNP administration has failed to meet its targets for tackling long waits with over 77,000 patients languishing for over a year; is deeply concerned that cancer treatment targets are repeatedly missed; regrets that the mental health crisis continues unabated with almost 2,000 patients waiting for over a year for treatment, and delayed discharge remains shockingly high, costing over £193 million alone in 2022-23; acknowledges that this is largely because of the SNP administration’s failure to fix the growing crisis in social care; calls upon the SNP administration to address this crisis by immediately removing non-residential care charges and set out a workable plan for achieving a £15 an hour minimum wage for hard-working social care workers; recognises that Scotland’s NHS is facing a workforce crisis, with over 7,000 vacancies unfilled, and welcomes the fact that a Scottish Labour administration would transform the NHS to meet the needs of future generations.”

If I may, convener, I will ask another question. David, you mentioned that you expect to see call waiting times coming down. Do you have a timescale to work to for bringing them down? Do you have targets for that so that we will be able to analyse what improvement looks like?

How are processing times impacting on clients? What is the view of the impact that they are having, and how does Social Security Scotland keep people informed and updated throughout the process, while they are waiting? Is there regular communication? Are there set points in the process at which communication is proactive?

I will expand on the point about the telephone system and people who call for advice. I have seen data showing that one in five calls was left on hold for over half an hour, and that 28,000 calls waited over an hour. The longest call waiting time that was recorded was, I think, three hours, seven minutes and 25 seconds. Obviously, there is a particular issue: I do not know whether it is about the volume of calls or about not having a robust enough system in place. Can you say something about the action that is being taken to rectify those issues?

This is similar to Katy Clark’s request: it would be useful if the committee could be updated on progress with that, if there is willingness to do so.

I want to expand on the conversation about rural locations and ask about childcare more broadly. A lot of the conversations in the committee have been about the expansion of funded childcare to 1,140 hours a year. Discussions are on-going about how that might be widened to include one and two-year-olds. Does the panel have a view on whether further state-funded childcare would be beneficial? How can we ensure that flexibility?

I am not sure who wants to come in on that. Rachel Hunter was on a roll.