Chamber and committees

Will Russell Findlay take an intervention?

When I became First Minister, I made it abundantly clear that the foremost priority of my Government would be the eradication of child poverty in Scotland. I reiterate that commitment today, at the start of 2025.

There can be no acceptable number of children living in poverty—not in a prosperous, modern society such as ours. Poverty limits a child’s opportunity, their health and their wellbeing. Its wider impacts stretch across every aspect of our community and span generations. It shackles our economy and strains our public services. Put bluntly, it holds us all back.

My Government will be relentlessly focused on acting to meet the ambitious targets that were agreed unanimously in Parliament, and I have committed every aspect of my Government to achieving them. Indeed, our action is already making a real difference to the lives of families. Modelling that was published in February estimates that the Government’s policies will keep 100,000 children out of relative poverty in 2024-25, with relative poverty levels 10 percentage points lower than they would have been otherwise. That includes keeping an estimated 60,000 children out of relative poverty through investment in our Scottish child payment. That payment is available to families in Scotland only; such a payment is not available in England and Wales. That is a key commitment of, and a key policy delivered by, the Scottish Government.

Child poverty is a deeply entrenched systemic problem, and it continues to affect too many children in Scotland. We must not only sustain our efforts but redouble them, and we must pioneer new and innovative ways of acting to achieve the aims that we have all agreed as a Parliament.

In the programme for government in September and in my November speech on my approach to government, I outlined how I propose to use the powers of Government to tackle the issue. It is not through quick-fix sticking plasters; I favour tackling the root causes of child poverty by working collaboratively within our communities, from the bottom up.

This year’s budget makes that approach possible. In it, we commit more than £3 billion to a range of actions to tackle poverty and the cost of living for households. Yesterday, I described it as a budget of “delivery and hope”. I said that because it delivers the things that make the biggest difference to people today, and it lays the foundation for a hopeful future in which Scotland can grow and prosper for years to come.

Because family poverty is child poverty, our approach to delivery addresses the issues that have a direct and immediate impact, day in and day out, on families in Scotland. That begins with the essentials: warm, safe homes, good jobs and money in people’s pockets.

Next financial year, we will invest £760 million to boost delivery through the affordable housing supply programme. That will support housing providers to deliver at least 8,000 properties for social and mid-market rent and low-cost home ownership. It will help to tackle the housing emergency by supporting immediate actions that will return existing housing stock to use, through addressing voids and increasing acquisitions, and it will ensure that families have secure and affordable homes in which to raise their children. We will also invest an additional £4 million to enable local authorities, front-line services and relevant partners to prepare for the new homelessness prevention duties. Also, because the best and most sustainable route out of poverty is good employment, we are investing up to £90 million in the delivery of devolved employability services. That includes specific funding to continue supporting parents to enter employment and to embed child poverty co-ordinators in local authorities.

We are investing more than £2.6 billion to support public transport and to make our transport system available, affordable and accessible to all, helping to connect parents to employment, training and skills opportunities and the services that they need to navigate their way out of poverty. That includes providing £415 million for concessionary bus travel, which enables access to free bus travel for 2.3 million people across Scotland.

The cornerstone of our support for families, however, is our investment in social security. Many families are struggling with the cost of living, and the budget provides them with immediate support for the day-to-day cost of living. We have made the decision to invest roughly £6.9 billion in benefits expenditure. That is almost £1.3 billion over and above what Scotland receives from the United Kingdom Government for social security, and it includes £644 million in benefits and payments that are available only here in Scotland and are not available in any other part of the UK.

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.

It is important to look at the data and the evidence. Over the past 14 years, we have lived through a period of punishing austerity. That is a financial context that Mr Sarwar and I agree about: we agree that the period of austerity has been incredibly damaging for public infrastructure and the public fabric of our country and that it has significant social and economic implications.

In that context, the Scottish Government has built 73 per cent more affordable homes per head of population than has been built in Wales and 47 per cent more than in England since 2007. That is the record of this Government, and I will argue for it. The facts speak for themselves: against the prevailing tide of austerity, the Scottish Government has built more affordable houses per head of population than any other part of the United Kingdom. However, I accept that that is not enough, which is why we have just increased the budget and put in a commitment to ensure that we can encourage and motivate more house building to address the very issues that Mr Sarwar raises with me today.

I begin by assuring the Parliament that there is currently no impact on patient care or the availability of IT systems for GPs as a result of the announcement.

Scottish Government officials are liaising with NHS National Services Scotland, which holds the national framework contract with INPS on behalf of NHS Scotland, and with the INPS administrators. NSS has established an incident management team, and contingency planning is under way. The Royal College of General Practitioners, the British Medical Association, GP practices and health boards in Scotland have been fully apprised of the situation. Officials have also engaged with counterparts across the four nations, with a further meeting being due to take place tomorrow.

This is an emerging situation. The company is now formally up for sale, and I anticipate that the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care will be able to provide a fuller update to Parliament in January.