Chamber and committees

I thank Kate Forbes for securing today’s debate. For all of us in the chamber, it is always a pleasure to be able to highlight and speak about the valuable role of Scotland’s third sector in our economy and in our society. Kate Forbes set out a number of the challenges in a very considered opening speech.

I know well the impact that the third sector has on the ground, working with individuals across Scotland. Most of my career before coming to the Parliament was spent working in the third sector. I declare an interest in that regard, having worked for Enable Scotland, as colleagues probably know, before my election to the Parliament. I was able to see up close the work that it and other third sector organisations do, particularly in the learning disability and social care space.

When we think about the third and voluntary sector, it is often such engagements that come to mind. We have already heard a number of examples from across Scotland in the debate. That is how third sector organisations, through their interactions, have the biggest impact on individuals, communities and society.

When we think about the provision of support services to people in our communities, we often see the third sector going above and beyond with its delivery and being praised for its high standards. When looking at social care services, The BMJ found that regulated social care services in the third sector are frequently of a higher standard than those in the private sector and that people often choose to receive care and support from third sector organisations that they trust and that are rooted in their local community.

There are other examples of that connection and trust fostering relations. Organisations such as the Outward Bound Trust equip young people in communities across Scotland with skills for life and engage them in community projects such as the Mark Scott leadership for life award. MSPs have reached a consensus on securing funding for that project for the coming year, following strong cross-party work, and we hope that that will continue. Countless third sector organisations across Scotland need and deserve support and are at the forefront of our minds during this debate.

Kate Forbes’s motion rightly highlights something that we do not consider nearly as much as we ought to, which is the economic impact of such organisations. The SCVO’s sector statistics for 2022 estimated that 46,500 charities, community groups and social enterprises were active in Scotland, employing 135,000 paid staff, supported by more than a million volunteers. They had an estimated turnover of £9.2 billion and spent more than £8.8 billion during that period. That is a significant economic footprint, which other reports—not least the work by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, which was referred to by a number of speakers—have also exemplified.

We have heard about the importance of ensuring that the third sector continues to contribute to our growing economy. We can do that by ensuring that the sector has certainty in planning, which largely means knowing where resources will come from. It is also important that funding is fair and that its structures work for the organisations. For those who have not already seen it, I point to the SCVO’s list of fair funding asks of the Government. It calls for multiyear funding, uprating and better communication and dialogue about funding awards. We should reflect on all of that, and I hope that the minister will say something in her summing-up speech about the progress of the Government’s fair funding review, because the SCVO is keen to see progress on that.

It is clear that we must ensure that the third sector is at the heart of Scotland’s economy, as a considerate and respected partner. We realise the potential of the third sector, which Kate Forbes’s motion rightly highlights, and that it can continue to make a huge contribution to Scotland now and in the future. I think that everyone here agrees with that, but we must do more to support charities across Scotland.

Following on from the fair funding review that I mentioned earlier, two recommendations have been progressed, including a commitment to notify by the end of March organisations that are going to be in receipt of two-year funding as part of the pilot. Can the minister say anything about the progress on that and whether that target will be met?

The arguments on the budget and on the required growth of the economy were well made. I did not detect a focus on economic growth or employability in the Scottish Government’s budget, nor did I detect one on improving access to work for people across Scotland, including parents, especially those of young children. We could have another debate on the council tax freeze, which has attracted a degree of commentary from across the country on what could have been paid for instead of that intervention, which was not welcomed across the piece.

If the minister is going to support that, I will certainly give way to her.

The minister will be aware of the “Dying in the margins” work by Marie Curie and the University of Glasgow, which has reinforced the significant demand for adapted properties for people who are diagnosed with a terminal illness. When someone passes, there is an impact on their family when they have to move out of an adapted property very quickly.

What will the Government do to engage with that piece of work to ensure a sufficiency of adapted properties and support for people who are grieving?

The minister knows full well that we had a number of debates in this place prior to Christmas on the devolution of employment law, and we have stated clearly that we need to have a UK floor for the standards that are expected. Our new deal for working people, which I am about to come on to talk about, has to represent the floor in terms of what we will deliver for people across the UK, with a view to the second phase, which will be on exploring what we can devolve further. We need to ensure that the standards are embedded across the UK.

What are those standards? They are a real living wage paid to workers, rights from day 1, the end of zero-hours contracts and the end of fire and rehire. Those should be the standards; that should be the floor—and that is supported by both the Trades Union Congress and the Scottish Trades Union Congress. That new deal for working people could represent a huge moment under a Labour Government, hopefully in the not-too-distant future, putting money back into the pockets of working people and supporting people in work. The point that I was making prior to the minister’s intervention was about that persistent low pay, which impacts on families across Scotland and hinders people from accessing all the support that they need in order to afford the essentials.

I will refer to some of the excellent work that has been done across Scotland, which I think would attract a degree of consensus in the chamber on where we can learn and do more. Fife Gingerbread is an excellent organisation, from which we heard during our inquiry. It has excellent advice and support services for lone parents and families in need. It co-ordinates with local employers to parent proof vacancies, establishing an action plan to help parents through training, education and going into employment, backed up by financial advice and all the holistic services that we would expect to be offered in supporting people on their journey back into work. I met representatives of Fife Gingerbread, and they commented to me that their whole approach is not just about the individual and the person seeking work; it has to be about the employer and the flexibility that we can expect from employers—which is not always forthcoming. I encourage the Government to continue to work in that space, to meet Fife Gingerbread again and to do further work.

As I have said already, I think that we need a floor of rights for workers and expectations on employers, and I think that we can do that at UK level with our new deal for working people. I am being expected to take a lecture on employment rights from a Scottish Government that does not pay £15 an hour to social care workers, despite the demands of the trade unions, that sold off £700 million of renewables licences without a single condition for workers and that itself used zero-hours contracts to deliver leaflets for the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election, so I do not think I will take any further lectures on employment rights from the Government.

Having been generous with interventions and having relied on your generosity, Deputy Presiding Officer, I am conscious of the time. I will conclude by saying that Scottish Labour remains committed to working with whoever is willing to drive forward a mission to tackle child poverty. We welcome the report and what it has done to highlight parental employment issues. We hope that we can do more to tackle childcare and transport issues, for example. However, fundamentally, we know that we must have a floor of rights across the UK and that that can come only with a Labour Government.

It is a pleasure to open the debate on behalf of Scottish Labour. I welcome the chance to highlight the report to Parliament and to highlight the important role that improved parental employability has to play in our fight against child poverty.

Tackling poverty, and in particular child poverty, is a mission that is broadly shared across the Parliament. Indeed, in many instances we have worked across the chamber to act in that area, not least by setting ambitious targets for the reduction of child poverty by 2030 and on the introduction of the Scottish child payment, which Labour had long called for and backed. It is no secret—we have already heard it said—that our actions need to go further and faster if we are to tackle child poverty and meet those ambitious 2030 targets. We need to recognise that there are concerns that we might fall short of those targets and of the interim targets that the Government has set.

Supporting parental employment as a mechanism to tackle poverty, which the report highlights, is just one of the areas in which we can go further and faster. I became a member of the Parliament’s Social Justice and Social Security Committee halfway through the inquiry.

If the cabinet secretary would let me make just a little progress, I will come back to her.

I joined the Social Justice and Social Security Committee as it was progressing through its inquiry, and I was not able to go on the committee visits, but I heard evidence from representatives of a number of leading organisations, who spoke about the work that needs to be done to support people back into work, in order to develop a strong economy. A lot of concern was raised about budgetary decisions that have been made, and we have to consider the promised £53 million in funding for employability schemes and the complete scrapping of the parental transition fund. That was seriously concerning, and it was raised by a number of the organisations that gave evidence during the inquiry.

We should also look to the research by One Parent Families Scotland, which has put on record the difficulties that families have experience in not being able to afford essentials.

IPPR spoke about

“a massive chasm between the overall number of people being reached by current employability programmes and those who are supported into work.”—[Official Report, Social Justice and Social Security Committee, 15 June 2023; c 25.]

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has highlighted that one in 10 Scots is in persistent low pay. As we know, women are particularly impacted by that, as they are more likely to be single parents.

Presiding Officer, I apologise to members that I will have to leave before the end of the debate and I thank you for your understanding in that regard.

I am pleased to lend my voice in this debate in support of the continuing work that we must do to realise equality for women and girls, not just at home but around the world. I acknowledge the many powerful contributions that we have heard from my colleagues on the Labour benches and the leadership that women in my party and across the Parliament have shown in working to break down barriers, smash glass ceilings and staircases and support other women to become engaged and involved in politics and public life. On that note, I welcome the minister to her place in her first debate in her new role.

However, we know that we have so much more to do, and it is clear to me that men have so much more to do. In contributing to previous debates on these issues, such as the debate in November on the 16 days of activism against gender-based violence, I have focused largely on the role that men must play in bringing about change and equality, and I intend to do that again in the time that I have today. The theme of this year’s international women’s day, which is “Inspire Inclusion”, is critical to changing men’s attitudes to women in all aspects of life.

As the UN’s IWD campaign organisation notes, when women are not present, all of us, but men in particular, need to ask why they are not. What could we change to make spaces more accessible to women? What could we change in our own behaviour, or call out in the behaviour of others, to ensure that all spaces are inclusive? What do we need to change in our systems to ensure that we actively encourage more women into those spaces, to promote equality?

I am proud of the work that my political party and movement has done in playing such a large part in advancing gender equality over many years. A previous Labour UK Government passed the Equality Act 2010, and Scottish Labour MSPs have been ferocious campaigners on ending period poverty, increasing women’s representation in politics and tackling the on-going problem of gender-based violence. However, we know that, across this Parliament and other legislatures, there is much more work to do towards achieving equality and inclusion.

As we have heard during the debate, we need to face up to the challenges that we, in Scotland, continue to see in our systems, and, in particular, in our workplaces. In workforces in which the majority of workers are women, we must properly value and develop roles and pay structures so that we can support women to get out of poverty and into long-term sustainable work that pays them not just to get by but to get on. We must continue to examine the issue of institutionalised sexism in the social security system and the unfairness that is embedded in some of its payments. In our justice system, too many women are failed, ignored, sidelined or treated with appalling misogyny. On today of all days, that should be at the forefront of all our minds. In healthcare, we must move forward with purpose—for example, on the creation of buffer zones so that women can access their right to healthcare free of harassment.

As legislators, we have an important role to play in all that work. On wider social and cultural levels, men have a similarly important role in ensuring that the burden of opening up spaces to make them more inclusive and to make society more respectful does not fall on women. Instead, the burden should fall on men to listen, change their behaviour and proactively take steps forward, rather than just expect someone else to take responsibility.

I am therefore pleased to support campaign groups such as White Ribbon Scotland, which does vital work in challenging pervasive and persistent misogyny, which is so often the root cause of enduring inequality and exclusion. I am also pleased to work with organisations such as Close the Gap, which works to close the economic gap that remains a barrier to women’s inclusion in the labour market and other places. It is crucial that we educate men, in particular, about such on-going work.

Domestic issues and work to change approaches remain a priority but, as we have heard, the issue is about more than just the problems here at home. Right across the globe, women and girls find themselves facing violence, oppression and misogyny every day. In the face of war and state violence, women stand up for their rights and, in many cases, their lives with incredible bravery. In Iran, women and girls risked everything to protest against the death of Mahsa Amini and the actions of the hardline regime’s morality police. In Afghanistan, women are fighting to retain their freedom and their lives following the Taliban’s return to power. In conflict zones from Ukraine to Africa, women’s rights organisations lead efforts to ensure the upholding of international law and to stop sexual violence being used as a tool of war. Our thoughts turn to the experiences of the women in Israel who were taken hostage by Hamas on 7 October and who have still not returned to their families, and to those in Palestine who, as many members have already referenced, are suffering unimaginable horrors in the most desperate of situations. Tomorrow, on international women’s day, we should all redouble our calls for an immediate ceasefire in that war—an end to rocket fire in and out of Gaza, the return of hostages and an end to violence and bloodshed—as we aspire to a two-state solution where no woman has to live in fear.

It is incumbent on us all to play whatever small part we can to support and stand with women, to ensure that they are empowered as agents of change, to call out and hold accountable the perpetrators of violence against them, and to ensure that men change and regulate their behaviour and the behaviour of others. We must all work together to make the change that we want to see in the world.