Chamber and committees

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I seek your guidance on the potential misleading of Parliament by a minister.

The national transition training fund was launched in October 2020 by the then minister, Fiona Hyslop, who said that the initial £11 million phase of the fund would help up to 6,000 people by March 2021. It was targeted at unemployed people. In a debate in November last year, I had an exchange with the minister Jamie Hepburn on the fund and the Government’s failure to meet the target of 6,000. That exchange was based on a media report earlier in the year, in which Mr Hepburn said:

“3000 places have been awarded”.

In the debate, Mr Hepburn intervened on my point about the failure to meet the 6,000 target for strand 1, to correct his own claim and to claim that the number was now 9,000. However, in today’s report from the national transition training fund, we discover that the number for strand 1 is not 9,000, 6,000, or even 3,000, but actually 1,206.

The minister claimed that the scheme was a success and that it had exceeded its target by 3,000 places, whereas, in fact, it had fallen short by 4,800—failing 4,800 unemployed people in their time of need—and the minister had potentially misled the Parliament on the scheme’s success. As is often the case with the Scottish Government, the talk is better than the action.

Presiding Officer, can you set out what avenues there are for ministers to correct the record?

Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?

Will the member give way?

Will the member take an intervention?

Liz Smith will have seen that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has issued a winding-up order against the division of Liberty Steel, which could have implications for the workers at Clydebridge and Dalzell steelworks. Does she think that the finance secretary should address that in her closing remarks and give clarity on the disputed guarantee for the potential clean-up of the site?

Patience on the issue is running out. In 2012, the Government promised to eradicate homelessness within months; 10 years later, 7,500 children were found to be in temporary accommodation. When will the Government meet its promise to those children?

We need a bit more urgency from the health secretary. In my constituency, the level of recruitment of health and social care workers is dire. Just this week, there are 36 advertised vacancies in social care and 176 vacancies in the NHS. Is that not the result of poor workforce planning and poor rates of pay in the social care sector?

I have read the cabinet secretary’s letter. The proposal was not an example: it was costed. It was costed for 2,000 classrooms at £150 a time, which is £300,000. The cabinet secretary is now being laughed at across the country for her proposals. She should ditch them and, as Michael Marra said, invest in air filters. If they are good enough for 2,000 classes, they should be good enough for 50,000. She should invest in air filters and stop the nonsense about cutting the bottoms off doors.

Every 19 minutes, a household becomes homeless. By the time that this debate ends, another four households could be homeless. Last year, 27,000 people were classed as homeless. In addition, 13,000 householders are stuck in temporary accommodation, including—this is shameful—7,500 children.

That is despite the repeated promises of the Scottish National Party, which has been in power for the past 15 years, of action on homelessness. In 2007, the Scottish Government promised to tackle homelessness. In 2012, it passed legislation to end homelessness within months. The Deputy First Minister at the time, Nicola Sturgeon, said that the legislation was Europe’s most progressive homelessness legislation. It would have been progressive if it had actually ended homelessness; it did not, yet the Government persisted in calling it an “historic homelessness commitment” and then a “world-leading homelessness target”.

Homelessness continued at embarrassingly high levels. In 2018, the Government moved to an action plan; that became the “Ending Homelessness Together” action plan in 2019, an end to “ghettoisation” in 2020 and “a continuing national priority” in 2021. As is always the case with this Government, the words are grander than the action. Therefore, members will forgive me for being a little bit sceptical on the latest commitment to a new prevention of homelessness duty. Apparently, the plans are “ambitious” and include new “legal duties” and a

“human right of an adequate home for all”.

Of course everyone is going to support the bulk of those proposals—who would not?—but it is action that counts.

With regard to Shelter’s concerns, I am puzzled as to why, if there is no difference between “permanent” and “stable”, the word cannot just be changed back to “permanent”. That would assure Shelter that there is no dilution of statutory rights in Scotland. If there really is no difference, let us stick with the wording that we are used to.

It is right to pursue early intervention and a person-centred approach, but for the thousands of people who are classed as homeless or living in temporary accommodation, those are just words, to be frank. What counts is action.

The work that was done at the outset of the pandemic shows what could have been done if we had set our minds to it. We got lots and lots of people off the streets. It was immediate action—the money was found and the difference was made. However, the reality is that, for years before that, funding had been cut—by 18 per cent, according to the Salvation Army.

Jeremy Balfour is absolutely right about this year’s council budgets. Supposedly, there is an extra £120 million; in reality, hundreds of millions of pounds have been cut. Most embarrassingly, the cabinet secretary does not seem to be bothered enough to make the case to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy for an increase in that funding. She is asking other people to do her job for her.

We have heard about the 256 people who died while experiencing homelessness in 2020. That is one of the highest figures in western Europe and an increase of 40 deaths compared with the previous year. Failed policies on drugs, mental health and housing, with long waits and inadequate services, have produced that figure. If people are living on the streets, sofa surfing or shuttling between temporary accommodation, that takes a huge toll on their mental and physical health and on children’s education and development. It stops people getting on in life. I live in hope—

—that this will be a change and we will end homelessness in Scotland. I live in hope, because we need desperate action.