Chamber and committees

Has it been a policy impact?

Good morning. I welcome the minister to her post. I think that I have already welcomed the cabinet secretary.

I totally and whole-heartedly agree with your statement. In the Parliament, I have raised horrible cases in which people took their own lives because they should have been in secure accommodation, so let us be clear that this is something that I support. However, I am concerned—and I wonder whether you will address my concern—about how the Government will achieve this. Do you have a plan?

Given the very strong statement that you made, how will you create the spaces and the funding to make it happen? Will there be a stepped approach—for example, this year, will you create so many additional places? I realise that you cannot do it in one go, but the only way that your statement can have any validity is if you can tell the committee that you have a plan to reach, albeit incrementally, the number of places that you would need.

This has been a controversial issue in Parliament for some time. The cabinet secretary will be well aware of how far back the issues and sensitivities go around who gets a secure place. It is a fundamental question that needs to be addressed by Government.

I am sorry to interrupt, but I want to get a clear answer to the question whether it is a policy change that has resulted in a reduction in custodial sentences and is the reason for our having 12 vacancies. Have I understood that correctly?

I just want to be clear about this. What you are both saying is that, with regard to the number of under-18s in young offenders institutions, there are about 12 vacancies. That has not really been the case before; indeed, I know for certain that William Lindsay or Brown did not go to secure accommodation, because there was no place for him, and he took his own life in Polmont—on remand, I have to add. I also want to ask you whether remand is included in all of this, too. Is it your position that it is the reduction—the policy change, if you like—that has resulted in the vacancies? I just want to be clear about why the vacancies exist.

In speaking to the Labour amendment, I will address the cost of living crisis, in the main. Across the UK, wages have been stuck for the best part of two decades, and the Trades Union Congress has said that UK workers are on course for two decades of lost pay. They have suffered the longest pay squeeze in all our lifetimes, so it should be no surprise that so many workers have been on strike in so many sectors in order to fight for fair pay and working conditions in the middle of a crisis, and in order to recoup their huge loss of pay over those years.

As the STUC has its annual congress this week in Dundee, Scottish Labour is clear that we stand in solidarity with all the trade unions and professional organisations, and with the nurses and doctors—in fact, all workers—who are vital to running our public services.

However, as the leader of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers—RMT—Mick Lynch, has said repeatedly during the strikes, the individual strikes are critical to encourage growth in sectors outwith the public sector. In other words, trade unions are also standing up for people who are not in trade unions. There is generally greater wage growth in the private sector than there is in the public sector, but it is a basic requirement in today’s society.

There is a need to create a floor—basic wage rates and fairness—for young workers in particular, but also for all those who work in precarious employment. That is why we need to legislate against zero-hours contracts. That is long overdue and is needed for many sectors. It is the basis of a fair and modern society.

Under long-lasting austerity, the average British family is more than £8,000 poorer than its equivalents in other advanced economies. There are many reasons for that, but the complicated post-Brexit trade barriers continue to add to the woes. That should never be forgotten.

The crisis is intensifying. It is impacting on more and more people and the damage that it is causing is there for all to see. Many people are in despair because there is no end in sight.

The cost of living crisis does not affect only people who are on the breadline. Britain’s mortgage market contracted for the fifth month in a row last month, as the jump in interest rates that followed Liz Truss’s September mini-budget continues to damage the economy and trigger a collapse for new home loans. When we talk to many people about that, we find that the increase in mortgage interest payments alone, never mind the mortgages, is astronomical.

We can see that the cost of living crisis is extremely scary for a wide range of people, but large corporations have fuelled inflation with price increases that have gone beyond the rising costs of raw materials and wages and are pushing shopping bills to record highs, according to an analysis of hundreds of company accounts. The cost of living crisis is very much a cost of greed crisis, because virtually all the big companies that sell essential food items and fuel are making vast record-breaking profits.

If we talk to most ordinary people about the rising cost of food, we find that it is not even transparent. We accept that costs are rising for particular reasons, but there is shock about the extent of rises, with food inflation reaching well into double figures.

I am speaking more to the cost of living aspect of the motion than to the poverty aspect, but it highlights the situation that we face as a country where living standards are declining, home ownership is getting harder to achieve, individual and household finances are getting more precarious for many more people, people who are just above the poverty line are increasingly likely to fall below it and many people have a lower standard of living than their parents did. We see a pattern of stagnation and decline.

In her opening speech, the cabinet secretary mentioned the importance of understanding intergenerational inequality. We should talk more about that issue. We did that in the previous session of Parliament, but the situation is even more acute now. Young people under the age of 40 will never see the levels of home ownership and prosperity that their mothers and fathers saw. That is an important policy agenda that the Government must address.

Rampant profiteering drives inflation and cranks up the cost of living for workers and families. It has been going on for almost two decades now. Children are the clear victims of those exploitative policies. The latest statistics from the “Poverty and Income Inequality in Scotland 2019-22” publication make for difficult and discouraging reading for Scotland’s families: the rate of child poverty in Scotland remains at the same stubborn 24 per cent level—that is 250,000 children who are experiencing poverty each year—as it was 16 years ago. That suggests to me that the Scottish Government needs to have, and will have, fresh policies in this Administration. It really needs to examine why that level is not coming down.

The sad fact is that we are in the third decade of the 21st century and Scotland still has levels of poverty that should be consigned to the past. That is not just a national scandal but a national shame.

The cruel irony is that child poverty is expensive. As we have discussed many times in the chamber, there is a premium on poverty, which is its extra hidden cost. People who are in poverty pay more through costly tariffs, prepayment meters and high credit rates. The University of Bristol has calculated that poverty premium at £242 million for Scotland.

As a member for the Glasgow region, I am concerned that there is no credible plan for economic growth in that city region, which has some of the highest levels of poverty. It is alarming that one in three children there lives in poverty, and that it has the highest proportion in Scotland of children in low-income families. It is remiss of the Scottish Government not to have a plan for Glasgow and the west of Scotland, because if one believes in redistribution of wealth, as I do and as the First Minister says he does, one cannot ignore the importance of an economic plan for Glasgow city and the wider region, where the level of poverty is extremely concerning.

I, too, congratulate Angela Constance on her appointment as Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs.

Does the cabinet secretary agree that this is a very serious matter? The call centre system was designed to redirect 101 calls to make response times look better, and the BBC reported today that some calls went unattended as a result of that.

The cabinet secretary says that she is not aware that the practice existed in any other parts of the force. However, does she agree that Police Scotland should never again allow pressures to meet certain response times and targets to lead to such a practice?

Given that the chief constable, who is leaving Police Scotland, has pleaded with the Government to fund the police to ensure that the 101 service, which is a vital public service, continues to provide the best service that it can, will the cabinet secretary assure members that she will make sure that the 101 service will operate effectively and be adequately funded?

Gerald Michie, do you want to come in?

Yes, but they are not children. That is what I need to pinpoint: they are not children, and that is the whole basis of the bill. I do not want to sound as though I am against extending that approach beyond the age of 18, but I want clarity. We are not talking about children, so if we support a different policy, I want to be clear about that.

Good morning. Some of you said that what the bill does is a good first step, which implies that we should go beyond the age of 18. I am interested in exploring that, because I am open-minded about that, but as you might have heard earlier, I am struggling to understand how we would organise the prison estate. Kate Wallace said that we do not want to reinvent a young offenders institution.

Professor Johnstone, you are talking about children, and we have this bill because we are signed up to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which says that someone is a child up to the age of 18, but it does not cover people up to the age of 21. I understand all the research about young people up to the age of 25, which has implications for lots of policy areas. However, if we were to extend this approach for young people beyond the age of 18, how could we make it work with the current configuration of the prison estate? Would extending that approach to people up to the age of 25 mean that we were arguing for the abolition of young offenders institutions? Perhaps we could hear first from the SPS.

Therefore, is it your position that you are content with the bill as it stands? You would not go beyond the age of 18, which is what I am—