Chamber and committees

I find it very disappointing that the minister has chosen to politicise the issue in the context of the general election in the way that she has done. She mentioned the national care service. Will the national care service as proposed bring a single penny of extra money into front-line health and social care? Does she recognise that there is a serious challenge in supporting and recruiting staff to care jobs, and that her constant refusal to commit to £15 an hour for care workers—a rate which is outlined and supported by the trade unions, including the GMB, and by the Labour Party—is having a real detrimental impact that is adding to the current pressures?

Will the member take an intervention?

As we have already heard, there is no issue that we debate in this chamber that is more important than the work to tackle child poverty; all parliamentarians desire to reduce the levels of child poverty.

I heard what the First Minister said about the desire for consensus in the middle of an election campaign. There will be many debates on the approach that we take to child poverty, but it is important that we start this afternoon with a degree of consensus and that we look to see where we can find common ground.

Back in 2017, every member of this Parliament committed to binding targets to reduce child poverty by 2030. Watching those debates back, I think that that was Parliament at its best: we decided that we should set a target and aspire to do all that we can to meet it. Of course, many actions have been taken that the Scottish Labour Party has supported. The Scottish child payment is an example of that.

Currently, the Social Justice and Social Security Committee is really getting into the detail of the impact of the Scottish child payment across Scotland and the difference that it is making. In that evidence, we have had a lot of qualitative data on the impact that it is making and have heard about many positive experiences, but we need further quantitative data on the scale of the impact.

I recognise that the Government is doing modelling, but it often says that the child payment lifts children out of poverty, whereas I think that the data shows that it keeps children out of poverty. It is clear that we need to have that additional data, and I hope that the cabinet secretary will reflect on that in her summing up.

It is important that we reflect on how we measure the Government’s progress towards the 2030 targets. Last week, the Poverty and Inequality Commission published its annual scrutiny report on the progress that the Government is making. We should be concerned by what is in that report, and I will share with members some of that. It said:

“In view of recent statistics and the scale and effects of actions taken over the last year, the Commission’s opinion is that it is unlikely that the interim targets will be met. Furthermore, without immediate and significant action, the Scottish Government will not meet the 2030 targets.”

It also said:

“Limited progress has been made ... Progress in other areas is slow or not evident at all ... The Scottish Government’s next progress report cannot just point to actions already taken nor propose more small-scale tests of change”,

and that

“such a fall, while not impossible, appears improbable.”

It is clear that the Poverty and Inequality Commission exists to mark the Government’s homework and to provide that level of scrutiny. Those calls on the Government to act further are clearly concerning.

Will the member take an intervention?

I am glad that the Deputy First Minister is taking the work of the Poverty and Inequality Commission seriously. When I asked her about the issue when she was deputising for the First Minister last week, I do not think that I got such a detailed response. Indeed, she affirmed again that those poverty targets will be met. I am keen to hear about how exactly they will be met, given the scale of the criticism.

On the substantive point that the Deputy First Minister makes in relation to the Government’s motion, of course we must ensure that we look at our social security system and that we have a fundamental review and reform it, because we know that it is not working. That is laid out in our amendment. I have commented on universal credit in this chamber on a number of occasions. That system that is not functioning well and is not supporting people, particularly those who are in work and who need that safety net.

If Labour has the duty and honour of forming the next UK Government, we must review and reform the whole universal credit system, because it is not working. It is clear that we will need to look closely at what we will inherit, because we know that the Conservatives will leave us with a very challenging set of circumstances. I will speak more about that as I progress through my speech.

Marie McNair is making a passionate speech. She referred to a family who were in work and in receipt of universal credit. Would she agree that we need a new deal for working people, that we need to increase wages to a living wage and that we need to ensure that people’s rights at work are protected so that they can afford things in order to ensure that they have good quality of life? Does she agree with that policy?

The First Minister will note that our amendment recognises that there is, of course, a UK context to what we are debating today. Through policy interventions at a UK level, we must do everything that we can to eradicate child poverty. I remind the First Minister that that is what the previous Labour Government did in this country through our interventions to reform the welfare state, ensure that child benefits were paid and ensure that there was a national minimum wage—I know that he was a member of the Westminster Parliament when that ground-breaking legislation was passed. All those measures from 1997 to 2010 are at the heart of what Labour Governments do, which is why we are so committed to reforming the social contract once again.

Before the First Minister’s intervention, I was making the point that in-work poverty is of huge concern to me and other Labour members. We must do more to support people who find themselves working in a job while feeling insecure, not being well paid, not having their rights at work protected and being reliant on food banks and food parcels, which is something that the First Minister rightly spoke about in his speech.

That is why we have set out quite clearly that we need a new deal for working people. We need to increase wages in order to provide a real living wage, ban the use of exploitative zero-hours contracts and end fire-and-rehire practices, alongside providing from day 1 other rights that are vital to ensuring that people can feel secure when going to work and can bring home a wage that will support them and lift children out of poverty. As I have said, that work will sit alongside action to fundamentally reform the universal credit system in order to make it work far better than it does currently.

It is clear that we need to reflect on all the efforts and interventions that are required to reduce child poverty. I ask the Scottish Government to reflect on what was said in the Poverty and Inequality Commission’s report and to consider its own decision making, which has created a number of challenges, not least in supporting people into work. I have raised in the chamber previously my concerns about reductions to the parental employability support fund, the removal of the parental transition fund and the slowed-down roll-out of the fair work agenda, given that we need to grow the support that is available.

I point to the cross-party work of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee, which has looked at a number of important pilots and innovative pieces of work across Scotland on those issues. For example, I highlight the work of Fife Gingerbread—which will be known to the First Minister and the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice—to support employers and to support people back into work. Such organisations are vital, and we must do all that we can to support those sorts of interventions.

I call on the Government to look at what it can do to support more local initiatives at local authority level, because we must ensure that we work across all spheres of government. The First Minister spoke about the relationship between the UK Government and the Scottish Government, but we must also recognise the relationship between the Scottish Government and local government, given the particular challenges that have resulted from cuts to local government funding during the period in which the First Minister has been a member of the Government.

I will begin to draw my remarks to a conclusion. We all want action to reduce child poverty—there is a degree of consensus in the chamber about that. However, the Government must reflect on the fact that, in the 17 years in which it has been in power and has had the levers of power in Scotland, child poverty has sat at the same level—it is 24 per cent, which is the same as in 2007; indeed, on many measures it has gone up.

An incoming UK Labour Government will focus on ensuring that we make the changes that we have to make so that people who are in work do not experience the same levels of poverty, and to fundamentally reform the social contract in this country. That is clearly the action that we would take and would want to take. We will work constructively with any Government and anyone who shares that vision and ideal to ensure that we take significant action to reduce child poverty and take steps towards eradicating it, because that is the right thing to do.

I move, amendment S6M-13566.2, to leave out from first “eradicating” to end and insert:

“child poverty should be a national mission for the Scottish Government, but deeply regrets that after 17 years of a Scottish National Party (SNP) administration, child poverty levels, after housing costs, have remained static, and that the most recent child poverty single-year statistics estimate that the number of children in Scotland living in poverty has now increased in 2022-23 to 260,000; acknowledges that the Poverty and Inequality Commission’s Scrutiny Report, published last week, provided a damning assessment of the SNP administration’s progress on tackling child poverty across a number of areas, noting that progress from the Scottish Government 'is slow or not evident at all'; disagrees with the Scottish Government’s decisions to slash the affordable housing budget, freeze the Scottish Welfare Fund, abandon parental employability schemes and decimate the Fuel Insecurity Fund, all of which act as barriers to prevent more children in Scotland falling into poverty; recognises that SNP inaction has been coupled with 14 years of dire economic mismanagement under the UK Conservative administration, which has led to increased child poverty rates across the UK; condemns the fact that, despite professing to tackle child poverty under successive First Ministers, child poverty is increasing, and the Scottish Government is now set to miss its interim reduction targets and its own legally-binding child poverty targets in 2030; urges the Scottish Government to heed the advice of its own expert advisors and take immediate and decisive action to reduce poverty across Scotland in the face of a decade of SNP inaction and failure, and welcomes the Labour Party’s plan to introduce a New Deal for Working People to deliver a real Living Wage, review Universal Credit and build a fairer social security system, tackle the cost of living crisis with a publicly owned clean energy company that would help to pay to keep bills down, paid for with a proper windfall tax on record oil and gas profits, deliver affordable public transport and housing support, end problem debt, and provide help and support for families and households across Scotland.”

Sure. I am happy just to hear from Mr Wallace.

It was remiss of me at the start of this contribution not to declare for the record my interest as an OSCR-registered charity trustee until 2023.

On the point about people rating the website as helpful, is that about searching the register or trying to access information? Do we have that level of detail?

Where measures are not being met—for example, the target for dealing with concerns cases is not being achieved—is there a resourcing issue? Does OSCR require further resource to drive some of that work forward, or is it more about the existing resource?