Chamber and committees

The cabinet secretary talks about “deliberate misunderstandings”. Parents the length and breadth of Scotland are looking at the plans—or, as she says, they are misunderstanding them—with consternation and concern. Even securely closed non-fire doors can help to slow the spread of fire and prevent smoke inhalation. That is common sense.

The Scottish Government has had two years to sort out the “misunderstandings”, as she calls them, yet it is still making proposals that should have been considered in 2020—not in 2022. Can the cabinet secretary confirm that spending £300,000 on chopping off the bottom of doors is not going to happen?

I want to ask about any overlaps with the work of the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee. Is it the intention that the CPG would identify issues and then move towards petitions?

What are your key measures of success, Mr Sweeney?

More than one farmer a week dies by suicide in the United Kingdom, and the suicide rate among vets is at least three times that of the general population. Given the particular mental health challenges faced by the agriculture-related professions, does the Scottish Government have any plans to explore more widely the underreporting of mental ill-health in rural areas?

I am just about to say my final few words.

Dundee is grappling with a mental health crisis, a drugs crisis and a homelessness crisis, and the council is about to have a funding crisis. It is all very well putting statutory duties in place, but effective service delivery is key to addressing many of the problems that lead to homelessness. I hope that the SNP does not lose sight of that.

I have only just started.

The income tax freeze does not detract from the fact that Scotland is still the highest-taxed part of the UK. The Scottish higher rate threshold might have been maintained at £43,662, but that figure is still significantly lower than the UK’s higher rate threshold of £50,270.

Those in Scotland who earn more than £27,850 will pay more in income tax in the year ahead than if they lived elsewhere in the UK, which means that hundreds of thousands of workers in Scotland who do the same job and earn the same wage have less money to spend than their counterparts in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

I will repeat what I have said—that those in Scotland who earn more than £27,850 will pay more in income tax in the year ahead than if they lived elsewhere in the UK.

The SNP says that its tax system is the fairest in the UK. Our teachers, nurses, and police officers might take a different view. We want Scotland to be a competitive place in which to live, work and do business, especially as we begin to emerge from the pandemic and focus on economic growth. Divergence in the tax regime cannot become a deterrent.

We know, for example, that the UK Government has had to compensate more than 14,000 armed forces personnel posted or based in Scotland, otherwise they would have taken an effective pay cut. I know from my own experience in human resources and industry that organisations will be reluctant to inflict a less favourable tax regime on their staff. That is more important than the other things that have been mentioned.

The reality is that more tax powers and higher tax rates are bringing Holyrood lower revenues. That is the view of the Scottish Fiscal Commission, and it is one that we must take seriously.

Yesterday, the First Minister pointed to further evidence that the threat from Covid-19 is receding. As we emerge from the pandemic, we must address the reasons why Scotland is lagging behind almost all other areas of the UK in key indicators of economic performance, as the Finance and Public Administration Committee highlighted in its budget scrutiny report.

Low growth in Scottish earnings and productivity, boosting labour force participation for young people, and providing adequate skills and training to meet the challenges and opportunities of the future are all issues that must consume our time and energy as policy makers during the current parliamentary term.

Access to affordable, safe and stable housing must be a central part of any strategy to end homelessness. That is why the Scottish Conservatives believe that the housing first approach should be accelerated and rolled out across all local authorities. However, homelessness is not just about the availability of housing. Its causes, as the Centre for Social Justice argues, are a complex mix of personal and structural factors.

Just as barriers to affordable housing and stable employment are drivers of homelessness, so too are adverse childhood experiences, family breakdown, mental ill health and addiction. For example, we know from the most recent homelessness figures that household disputes, both violent and non-violent, accounted for more than a third of homelessness applications. Further, the prevention review group report highlights that almost a fifth of homeless applicants have had drug or alcohol-related issues.

That is why prevention and early intervention are so important, and why organisations such as Shelter Scotland and Crisis emphasise that homelessness prevention needs to become a priority focus for policy makers.

The United Kingdom and Welsh Governments have already put in place prevention duties. In England, that led to a 46 per cent drop in homelessness, and it led to a 59 per cent decrease over the first two years in Wales. Research from Crisis demonstrates that, during the same period, Scotland experienced a rise in the rate of homeless applications.

As Dr Beth Watts told the Social Justice and Social Security Committee in November last year, it is clear that the needs of those who are particularly susceptible to homelessness are much broader than the remit of local authority housing and homelessness departments. A whole-system, person-centred approach is therefore sensible. However, to be effective, it must be sufficiently resourced. Health and social care services, children’s services, police and prisons are already operating at capacity. For the proposed legislative changes to have the necessary impact, those who are charged with implementing them on the ground must be supported. I agree with the emphasis on

“a shared public responsibility to prevent homelessness”,

but I sincerely hope that that is not an abdication of the SNP-Green Government’s responsibility on the issue.

As an example, we can take Dundee, in my region, which is a city that the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government knows very well. A 16-month investigation into mental health care in NHS Tayside heavily criticised the

“poor service, treatment, patient care and outcomes.”

Tragically, figures that were released in December show that the number of suspected drug deaths in Tayside remains at 2020 levels. Last year, although Scotland experienced a 9 per cent decrease in the number of homeless applications, Dundee City Council recorded a 9 per cent increase, while the housing first project has been cut to the bone.

As my colleague Liz Smith mentioned in her opening remarks, the Scottish Conservatives will not oppose the rate resolution ahead of the stage 3 proceedings on the Budget (Scotland) Bill. It is a procedural necessity, which means that income tax can continue to be collected in Scotland.

We are a party of lower taxation, but we equally recognise the uncertain fiscal situation that the pandemic has created. Funding the economic recovery must come first.

At first glance, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy’s commitment to freeze income tax rates for the year ahead is welcome, especially after the SNP’s outrageous U-turn on its manifesto pledge to freeze the basic rate of income tax in the previous parliamentary session—a U-turn, let us not forget, that both the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister insisted would not happen.

However, the SNP-Green Government’s failure to adjust the higher rate threshold according to inflation means that thousands of Scots still face a de facto tax hike, to the tune of £106 million.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer.

Shona Robison, the cabinet secretary, misrepresented what I said about the housing first team in Dundee. I said quite the opposite. Members can look back at the text; I said that the team had been “cut to the bone” and that it needs more support. I was misrepresented.