Chamber and committees

Given what you have said about the Scottish Government’s investment in whole-family wellbeing and employability services, do you expect the poverty rate for lone parent families to decrease over the period in trying to meet those targets?

I know that colleagues will talk about data and that we have already spoken about the child payment—I think that we are all agreed on its importance and on some of the anecdotal evidence that has been raised—but I have a final question under this theme on the modelling that the Government is using.

A year ago, many of your colleagues—and, I think, you, as the cabinet secretary—were speaking about 100,000 children being lifted out of poverty. That was shown not to be the case. I think that the UK Statistics Authority wrote to the Government in that regard. The figure was then corrected to 60,000 children being kept out of poverty, and we are now at a figure of 40,000 children being kept out of poverty. Will you clarify whether the 40,000 figure is the accurate one in the Government’s view? How certain are you of the modelling that you are now using to establish that figure? Everyone around the table wants to make sure that we are dealing with accuracy, because it is such an important policy.

On the Scottish Government’s policy on the two-child limit and the background work that has been done on that, we have had a lot of conversation this morning about the need to take decisions over a period of time. The two-child limit was brought in in 2017, and the Government’s policy was that it was not going to mitigate the impact of the limit because it said that it could not. It then introduced the policy that we are discussing this morning, and the cabinet secretary gave figures on the modelling on the impact that that will have on Scotland.

I have asked a number of times when the policy decision was made by the Government. I asked at committee when we originally discussed the proposal, and I know that the finance secretary was asked at the Finance and Public Administration Committee when that decision was made. I have had to ask parliamentary questions, and I have made freedom of information requests, but I cannot get an answer to exactly when the decision was made. It is important in the context of understanding what work on the issue was being done prior to that decision. Will the cabinet secretary put on the record when she took the decision and, if she is not willing to do that, will she say why she is not willing to do that?

So, you are not going to say when you took the decision to—

With respect, you have not, because you have not given me the date on which you took the decision. I am interested in what work was done prior to that, given that the Government spent a long time saying that it could not take action. If you can give me a date, that would be really helpful.

The cabinet secretary has made that point to me many times, and that is her view. However, she does not support any of the revenue-raising measures that the UK Government has taken, including the changes to national insurance, the changes to inheritance tax and the levy on energy companies, so I am keen to understand whether she has any suggestions about how the UK Government should raise revenue.

The Government has six priority groups for the action that it is taking to reduce poverty. Are you concerned that, among all those groups bar one, child poverty is going up? In particular, it has gone up by 4 percentage points among ethnic minority households in the past decade, it has gone up by 5 percentage points among lone parent households and it has gone up by 8 percentage points among households with a baby under one. The Scottish Government has extensive powers to support lone parents and women into work, so do you recognise that there has been a failure in that regard?

With respect, the cabinet secretary would acknowledge that the Scottish Government has not produced a medium-term financial strategy for quite some time.

Growth is increasing.

I add my thanks to Michelle Thomson for lodging the motion and opening the debate; I recognise the way that we have engaged across parties in the chamber to ensure that the debate could take place today. I also pay tribute to the excellent work of Beyond Srebrenica Scotland and to its chair, Sabina Kadic-Mackenzie, for all her efforts in ensuring that we protect the memory of Srebrenica and educate people about what happened there 30 years ago.

To that end, I urge colleagues to join the events in Parliament today. There will be a drop-in in the Fleming room, where some of the young people whom Karen Adam referenced will talk to members, and a photograph will be taken outside at quarter past 2. I hope that colleagues will be able to join us in those endeavours.

Like Michelle Thomson, I was honoured to take part in the delegation to Bosnia and Herzegovina in March, along with minister Siobhian Brown and many others from across public life in Scotland. It was one of the most profound things that I have done as an MSP and, as Michelle Thomson referenced, a great opportunity to understand and encounter people who lived through those horrendous experiences 30 years ago.

When I was in that delegation, each evening I tried to write something to capture my thoughts and experiences. In the speaking time that I have, I will read to colleagues one of the reflections that I wrote on the day that we came back from Srebrenica:

The sun is slowly dipping below the hill. There has been some warmth today and all around are hints of spring, but as evening falls there is a chill that seems to reach down to us from the mountains. Nzad has just finished speaking to us. He is framed by row upon row of white gravestones. He survived a mass execution as a child and walked with bullet wounds to his head and stomach for days to reach safety. He is a softly spoken man. He speaks calmly and generously answers our questions. He speaks about his daughters, who just yesterday played with Bosnian Serb girls in the local volleyball team.

Despite the horrors done to him and to those he loved, he wants a better future for his children. A silent reverence lingers before we rise to walk one last time in the fading light around the thousands of graves, touching the names etched into the grey stone on the Srebrenica genocide memorial—each a son, a father, a brother, a husband.

There is something incomprehensible here—something that makes me want to stay longer, to try to understand, to cry out, to do something, although nothing seems to meet the enormity. The journey here reminded us of the fragility of the peace agreement and the prevalence of denial of the genocide in the Republika Srpska. In each service station and each town, there would be people who had turned on their neighbours, people who had stayed silent in the face of what was happening, and people who even carried out those unspeakable acts. They are walking these roads, sipping coffee, watching our bus pass.

We visited the memorial centre at the battery factory, which was the Dutch UN base at Potocari, and we retraced the footsteps of those days in July 1995. We were all rendered speechless by video footage of what happened after the UN allowed the Bosnian Serb forces to separate boys and men from women and girls. Promises of safe passage to free Bosnian territory were a lie.

In the video, filmed by their executioners, we watched six men shot dead. The two youngest were spared until they had dragged the four bodies of their comrades into a shallow grave. There are no words. We all reach out to each other without speaking as we climb the stairs to meet the directors of the centre.

Before we left, we met Mother Fadala. She speaks to us at her shop, selling flowers, books and memorial items. Like all the mothers, she lost everything. The shop is her defiance, her reason to go on. The authorities of the Republika Srpska do not want her here, but this unassuming, smiling small lady in her 80s is a rock, unmovable, strong. She tells us that soon she will travel to the United Nations in New York to call for the international community not to forget and to do more. This is what the mothers do. They stand because others cannot.

In the darkness of our journey back to Sarajevo, there is much to process. I think of the sun setting on those rows and rows of white stones and the words that are written in the books held in common by the Abrahamic faith. What have you done? Listen—your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.