The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.
All Official Reports of meetings in the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament.
All Official Reports of public meetings of committees.
Displaying 1053 contributions
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 21 September 2021
Willie Rennie
Certainly. I suspect that the current Government wishes that it had agreed to my request for an inquiry.
From Heathrow to transport to agriculture, this Government talks a good game but often fails to deliver.
16:27Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 16 September 2021
Willie Rennie
Will it be possible to recruit staff who are able to produce timely guidance, unlike yesterday’s guidance, which notes that further guidance on this year’s qualifications will be produced in October? That is two months into the school year—how on earth will that help pupils and teachers?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 16 September 2021
Willie Rennie
Staff morale is at rock bottom now. Staff are feeling inordinate pressure and, to be frank, this investment comes far too late. Murdo Fraser is right—the problems were evident before the pandemic. I need to understand from the cabinet secretary why those decisions about investment and staff recruitment were not made years ago when they should have been.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 16 September 2021
Willie Rennie
I hope that ministers were listening to that contribution, because it was one of the most powerful contributions that I have heard in the chamber for some time. There is a lot to learn from Pam Duncan-Glancy—her speech was an encyclopaedia of information about the state of poverty in Scotland. Ministers should listen and, more importantly, they should act.
I will focus my contribution on child poverty. Eradicating child poverty is an urgent mission. After 30 years of decline across the United Kingdom, it is once again on the rise. That means that more than one in four—260,000—Scottish children are officially recognised as living in poverty. In the absence of significant policy change, the figure is likely to increase in the coming years, reaching 38 per cent in 10 years. The Resolution Foundation suggests that the Scottish child poverty rate will be 29 per cent in two years. That is a lot of numbers, but I will clarify the situation for members. The rate is 25 per cent now. In two years, it will rise to 29 per cent and, in 10 years, to 38 per cent. That should be to our shame if we do nothing, and what we are doing so far is just not enough.
The connections between poverty and poor educational outcomes, behavioural problems, chronic illness and mental health are clearly evidenced—[Interruption.]
I will come to the Conservative Government later, on universal credit, but every Parliament in the UK needs to work to address the poverty that is gripping too many of our children. We should not simply complain about another Government, but take action on areas within our power. I am afraid that the Scottish Government too often points the finger elsewhere, rather than taking action here at home.
For Liberals, education and work are the route out of poverty. We support putting power in the hands of young people by giving them the educational tools that they need to achieve, and to get a good job and a warm home for themselves and their family in the future.
The performance in Scotland has just not been good enough. Five years ago, the First Minister promised to close the poverty-related attainment gap completely. She said that it was simply unacceptable that youngsters from the most deprived areas of Scotland were doing only half as well as their counterparts from the richest areas when sitting higher exams. She went on to say:
“I want our work to close the attainment gap to be the mission not just of this Government nor even of this Parliament but of the country as a whole.”—[Official Report, 25 May 2016; c 5.]
Yet, over five years later, the poverty-related attainment gap still stands at 35.8 points of difference at Scottish credit and qualifications framework level 6 or above.
At that rate of progress—I acknowledge that there has been some modest progress—it will take another 35 years for the poverty-related attainment gap to close. The First Minister promised to close the gap completely; she did not say that it would take 35 years.
This area of public policy is completely in the hands of the Scottish Government. The Government has talked a good game on education and poverty, but it has failed to deliver. It has been slow-footed on introducing early years education for two-year-olds, and it is still slow-footed. Only about a third of those two-year-olds who are entitled to nursery education access it. That has been going on for years, yet the Government has failed to take action.
The Government has been slow-footed in adopting the pupil premium in England that targets funds at the poorest pupils in school. The “not made here” belligerence of the SNP has had a dramatic effect on the life chances of thousands of young people. The clock is ticking for the SNP-Green coalition Government because the clock is ticking for our young people. A poor child starting school now will be 40 years old by the time that the coalition Government closes the poverty-related attainment gap. Those children deserve so much more than that.
Turning to the Conservatives, modest criticism from the Conservative benches here is just not enough. I happen to agree with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, who declared that
“the best way to take people out of poverty is to find them high-quality work.”
Who could disagree with that? That also happens to be the best way of cutting the cost of universal credit to the public purse. High-quality work cuts the universal credit bill by not £20 but £100 a week. However, the Conservatives have an unhealthy belief that the best way to tackle poverty is to make those who cannot find well-paid work, which is what is required, even poorer than they are now. That is not the way to tackle poverty or get people into work. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation was clear about the issue and said that the universal credit cut could force 500,000 people—almost half of them children—into poverty.
The Scottish Conservatives need to speak up and make their voice heard. If they do not agree with the policy, let them speak, criticise the UK Government and force it into taking action. The Conservatives have been cavalier on the issue. It is no longer acceptable and is short sighted, cruel and mean-spirited to punish people who are in their hour of need.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 14 September 2021
Willie Rennie
When the minister gets cheap, Parliament knows that he does not have an argument to justify his case, and that is the case this time. If what we have seen with the centralisation of the police was not the biggest warning, which the Government should heed, I do not know what would be. If the Government undertakes big bang reorganisation in a rush to solve a problem that it does not have actual solutions for, the consequences are severe.
Political decisions have consequences, and we need to be incredibly careful about that. Alex Cole-Hamilton rightly set out that this is a cynical attempt by the Government to compare its reforms with the creation of the national health service. However, the national health service was free at the point of delivery, whereas this is nothing more than a central power grab.
The Government should do better at setting out its case than the pathetic attempt that it has made today.
16:49Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 14 September 2021
Willie Rennie
I assume that the cabinet secretary will come on to the justification for the centralisation of social care. This will be the third such bureaucratic reorganisation since the Scottish Parliament was created. The others have not worked, so what makes the cabinet secretary think that, this time, another reorganisation will make a difference?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 14 September 2021
Willie Rennie
I will, in a second.
This is the third major bureaucratic reorganisation of health in the 20 years of the Parliament. We started off with the joint future initiative. Then we had the IJBs and the health and social care partnerships. Now we have central control. None of the other reforms through big bang reorganisation made any great difference, so I am not sure what the Government thinks will be different this time. The cabinet secretary—whose intervention I will take in a second—said that the current structure is preventing him from paying health and social care staff properly. That is utter nonsense. If the Government wanted to pay those staff more, it could do that right now. There is absolutely nothing preventing it from doing so.
I will take the intervention now.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 14 September 2021
Willie Rennie
It was an extraordinary start to the debate. We were told that it would introduce the central reform of this session of Parliament—the creation of a national care service. However, the health secretary hardly mentioned that in his opening speech. If it is going to be such a major change to the way in which the social care service is run, it deserves to be better led than it has been in this debate. That is no way to lead a major reform.
There have been some excellent speeches in the debate. Sandesh Gulhane set out from his great experience the long-standing difficulties that we see in the NHS now, which were there before the pandemic and meant that we were not ready for the pandemic when it came. We are now suffering the consequences, as Jackie Baillie set out—the long waits to get treatment.
Craig Hoy’s very good speech set out in detail some of the problems around diagnostics; the legally binding treatment time guarantee that has not been met for years, since way before the pandemic; and accident and emergency service waiting times. Carol Mochan and Gillian Mackay set out the problems with mental health services, which my party has been dedicated to reforming for some years. As yet, those services have not seen the improvement that I think we deserve.
Despite that backdrop of those years of failure on the NHS, the Government thinks that it is best placed to take control of this country’s care service as well. It should sort out its own problems before taking on other people’s problems. The Government is exhibiting typical avoidance behaviours, avoiding the big central problem of the care service. Jackie Baillie said that that is more about culture than about organisation, and she is right.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 9 September 2021
Willie Rennie
Not just now.
Is Patrick Harvie content to let anti-vaxxers spread misinformation? Does he now think that Boris Johnson cares after all? I know that Government office can change people, but I did not think that it would turn Patrick Harvie into Boris Johnson’s biggest cheerleader.
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
Meeting date: 9 September 2021
Willie Rennie
Just six weeks ago, Patrick Harvie wrote in my favourite authoritative journal, The National. He railed against Boris Johnson’s plans for vaccine passports and said that
“threats and coercion will backfire”,
that the plans could destroy public trust,
“deepen discrimination ... deepen inequality”
and allow
“anti-vaxxers ... to spread misinformation”.
To top it off, Mr Harvie said that Boris Johnson just “doesn’t care.”