Chamber and committees

I am anxious to engage with Mr O’Kane on the question of agreement across the parliamentary spectrum. One of the points that I made in my speech is that Parliament has agreed on and legislated for child poverty targets, and we all believe that it is important to achieve them. Does Mr O’Kane recognise and accept that there is an obligation on all members of Parliament, whether their parties are in government or in opposition, to contribute constructively to assist Parliament to achieve the objectives that Parliament has legislated for, almost considering them as not the property of the Government but the property of us all, as members of Parliament?

I agree entirely with Mr Rennie’s point that the Scottish child payment contributes, but it is not the whole story. The whole story has to be about the alignment of Government policy to support those objectives. That is why one of the other priorities in the Government’s budget has been to put in place a real-terms increase in the local government core grant to enable local authorities to strengthen the services upon which many of the individuals that Mr Rennie refers to would depend to help them on their journey out of poverty, in addition to the other measures that I mentioned in my speech. I give him that reassurance that that point is accepted and is at the heart of the Government’s approach to the child poverty strategy.

I very much welcome what Liz Smith said about the impact of the Scottish child payment: that point is beyond dispute.

However, I have been left a bit bewildered by the attack that her party’s leader levelled at our social security expenditure. At the heart of Mr Findlay’s charge to me were several suggestions about areas in which reductions in expenditure should be undertaken. I just do not follow how it is possible for Liz Smith to tell me that the policy on the Scottish child payment is, according to the evidence, working but for Mr Findlay simultaneously to argue that we should reduce social security expenditure.

If Mr Findlay will not address the Liz Truss issue, will he say whether he considers that the agenda of austerity that was pursued consistently from 2010 to 2024 by the Conservative Government helped or hindered the battle against poverty?

I am grateful to Mr O’Kane for giving way for a second time. I point out to him that we will only have 20 years of an SNP Government if we win the 2026 election, which I fully intend to do.

On a point of consensus, I welcome that we are in an improved position on the public finances because of UK Government decisions. I accept that point, but does Mr O’Kane not have to accept that the madness of 14 years of austerity, which essentially reversed the very good work that was done by the previous Labour Government in reducing child poverty, has contributed to making our challenge a great deal harder?

The Government has a fully costed budget, which is available for Parliament to scrutinise and to support in February and which provides for the cost that I am talking about. The benefit of what the Scottish Government is doing with that investment is that we are helping to keep hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty as a consequence. That is an investment in economic growth and the future of our country.

I mentioned the £644 million in benefits and payments that are available only here in Scotland. Our five family payments can be worth more than £10,000 by the time that an eligible child turns six and around £25,000 by the time that an eligible child turns 16. That compares to less than £2,000 for families in England and Wales, where support ends when an eligible child turns four. Last November, Social Security Scotland announced that we have reached the milestone of paying £1 billion to support families through our five family payments. We know from speaking to those families how important that support has been to them.

From April, we will enhance that support by increasing all Scottish social security assistance by 1.7 per cent, which is in line with inflation. Our Scottish child payment will increase to £27.15 per child per week. This coming year, it is forecast to support the families of 333,000 children. In total, our investment in social security is expected to support around 2 million people in 2025-26. I want to underscore—this is my response to Liz Smith—that those payments are an investment and not a cost to be borne. They are an investment in Scotland’s people and communities and in its future.

I cannot be alone in expressing my concern about the abrupt new direction that is being set by the Labour leader in Scotland, who suggested yesterday that Labour is now committed to lowering rather than increasing that vital investment in our society. That will consign more children to living in poverty, and it is not the agenda of the Scottish Government.

I said at the start that the Government’s budget is one of delivery and hope. With it, we are setting a firm foundation for the success of our society and future generations. In the long term, we will realise the greater return on that investment. We will see it in a robust and resilient wellbeing economy that promotes economic and social equality and that decarbonises our communities.

We must make those investments today, however, if we hope to benefit from them tomorrow. That will work only if all children are supported to have the best start in life. That is why we are prioritising areas such as early years, childcare and education.

With this budget, we are continuing our investment of around £1 billion each year to deliver 1,140 hours of funded early learning and childcare to all eligible children. We are also providing £9.7 million in additional funding to local authorities to increase to at least the real living wage the pay of early learning and childcare workers delivering funded childcare. The budget includes additional measures to support attainment and to address the poverty-related attainment gap, with additional investment of £41 million for local authorities to protect teacher numbers and to bring the number of teachers in Scotland back to 2023 levels.

We must equip children to be successful once they are in school, so we are investing more to enable the expansion of breakfast clubs across Scotland through our bright start breakfasts fund. That will enable us to deliver thousands of new places for primary school children. We are also expanding free school meals through an investment of £37 million. We will grow the programme to cover those in receipt of the Scottish child payment in primary 6 and 7, helping to provide healthy and nutritious meals to around 25,000 more children.

We are providing a further £14.3 million to support the school clothing grant, increasing that vital support for eligible families to at least £120 for primary school pupils and £150 for secondary school pupils.

All that I have mentioned so far is key to combating child poverty. It is needed, and it is making a tremendous difference every day to children all across Scotland.

We must ensure that we are able to make the appropriate provision that is necessary for the size and scale of the population that requires to be educated in our colleges. That will vary from year to year, of course, depending on levels of employment within the economy. Crucially, with the budget that we are putting forward, I am confident that we have adequate resources to support individuals’ employability and skills journeys to enable them to move from economic activity into employment, and—for individuals who face challenges from the changes required because of decarbonisation in our economy, for example—to acquire the skills that they require to make progress in our economy.

I share Mr Findlay’s objective of ensuring that justice is done for individuals who suffer as a result of criminal behaviour in our society. The Government has introduced the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill, which is being scrutinised in Parliament, and which is designed to strengthen the experience of victims in our criminal justice system. We will consider the amendments that Mr Findlay has lodged on behalf of those individuals—he mentioned the name of Liz Shanks—to advance those issues. We will consider the contents of those amendments as the committee and Parliament look at the contents of the bill.

In relation to Mr Findlay’s earlier remarks, I make the point that, although the Scottish Sentencing Council is a creation of statute, it acts independently of the Government. That ensures that all the different elements in the criminal justice system that I talked about—the independent judiciary, the independent prosecutorial service and the independent sentencing council that advises on sentencing approaches—are undertaken in a way that assures all of us that the criminal justice system is operating in a fair, appropriate and dispassionate fashion across all cases and that nobody is prejudiced as a consequence.

In relation to Mr Beattie’s case, Mr Findlay will be aware of the route through the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission for potential miscarriages of justice to be explored, which has led to judgments and decisions being overturned in the past. That is a well-established statutory route through which such approaches can be pursued.

I agree with Mr Sarwar on the objective of ensuring that children do not live in poverty—that is absolutely at the heart of my Government’s programme and of everything that we are trying to do.

On housing, I am afraid that it is not good enough for Mr Sarwar to dismiss the points that I have made about the evidence. In a climate of austerity, the Scottish Government has built more affordable houses per head of population than have been built in any other part of the United Kingdom. That is a simple statement of the evidence on our commitment to housing.

In the budget proposition that we have put forward, £768 million is allocated to the housing budget. As part of that, resources are available to tackle the issue of voids, which has been tackled during the current financial year, to bring more properties into use. Government expenditure is being used to support that activity.

In addition to all that, the Government’s budget provides a record settlement for local authorities: the £1 billion increase in local authority funding will support services that include homelessness services.

This is where we get to the crunch point. In a few weeks’ time, we will find out whether Mr Sarwar is interested in a solution or whether he is interested only in rhetoric. The Government’s budget will have to be voted for in this Parliament. The people of this country have just had an insight into Mr Sarwar’s rhetoric. We have heard Mr Sarwar’s rhetoric on the WASPI women—women against state pension inequality. Before the election, the Labour Party promised big, bold action on the WASPI women, but it has delivered absolutely nothing whatsoever.

Mr Sarwar is in no position to come here and give any of his rhetoric unless he is prepared to vote for the Government’s budget and help to lift children out of poverty.