Chamber and committees

If the cabinet secretary is willing to take credit for those selective statistics, is she prepared to accept responsibility for Scotland’s overall economic performance, which lags behind the rest of the United Kingdom’s performance? Does she accept any responsibility for that?

I am coming to my conclusion.

We are nowhere near the full delivery. That is all that I am pointing out. I understand what the minister said about timing—these things do take time to implement—but we were promised a grand new welfare and benefits system and we were promised that independence would be delivered in 16 months. Years later, that should be a sobering lesson to the SNP.

We have tried to work constructively with the Government throughout. We support dignity, fairness and respect. We think that, in the forging of a new welfare system, the country needs to come together to do its best to make sure that that works effectively. We will continue with that approach, as I hope I have shown the minister that we are determined to do.

I know that the minister probably finds me rather curmudgeonly on occasion and a tad critical of the Government’s management of its responsibilities. That is because I am usually right: the Government’s record is pretty terrible in many areas.

I plan to tread new territory, however, and to compliment those responsible for the progress so far in Social Security Scotland. [Interruption.] Jim Fairlie should not get too carried away: my compliments will be limited and will not go too far. I praise those in Dundee and elsewhere who have been working throughout. It is a big programme and has been delayed, but the progress must be recognised and ministers deserve some credit.

I find Ben Macpherson an open and approachable minister. He is also focused on and dedicated to his work—there is no doubt about that. Jeane Freeman probably also deserves some credit for setting up the implementation plan at the beginning.

That is enough of that. I am coming out in a rash now.

It is also important to recognise that there are warnings in the Audit Scotland report. There is still a huge amount to be done. For example, the case load for the adult disability payment, which we discussed yesterday, is forecast to go from a few thousand just now—20,000—up to almost 500,000 in only five years. We have only just started on that benefit, so we need to keep our feet on the ground. There is also the extension of the child payment to 200,000 older children—the six to 15-year-old range—by the end of this year. That is a big step as well. We know that there were problems with the child disability payment roll-out. That is not unreasonable—the pandemic created some of those issues—but it shows that the system is not as robust as the minister would like to think.

The people who are dependent on the adult disability payment and the Scottish child payment need the money and need it on time. They are cutting right to the edge every month and run out of money before the end of the week. They need the money without delays, so there is no slack and we need to make the system work because we know the consequences that it has for people’s lives if we do not get it right.

Yesterday, I asked the minister how confident he was of the timetable for delivering those benefits. He rightly talked about the system but did not express any confidence. Perhaps he can clear that up now.

Last April, the First Minister claimed that the Northern Ireland protocol was a template for an independent Scotland in the EU; last week, she warned that it could trigger a trade war with the EU and tip the UK into recession. What is the Government’s view this week?

We will hold the minister to account on that because it is important. Not only I, but all the children and people with disabilities will hold him to account to ensure that that is fulfilled. I hope that he is right.

There also needs to be a focus on costs. Miles Briggs was right about that. The cost of the benefits is an additional £760 million according to Audit Scotland. The implementation costs have doubled since 2017. The criteria have changed and the scope is different, but, nevertheless, it is quite an increase from what was originally planned.

I understand the purpose of having, and the need for, an agile system that has a focus on the needs of the user. However, it comes with costs to the system. We must recognise that money is not unlimited and ensure that the system is in balance. Perhaps the minister could tell us in his closing speech how he will keep control of those costs.

We have heard more today from the minister, but we need the full details of the replanning of several benefits that need to be rescheduled: the pension age disability payment, various carers payments and employment injury assistance. All of that needs to be set out in detail, because people are dependent on those benefits.

The cost of living crisis must be at the centre of everything that we think about in the Parliament. It will plunge huge numbers of people into poverty. We have met many people who are experiencing that already and it will only get worse. The package that the chancellor announced today will help with that to some degree but we must be ready to do more and the Parliament must do more.

The Child Poverty Action Group is calling for a number of steps to be taken, including the doubling of the bridging payments for the Scottish child payment. I hope that the minister will address that, too, and ensure that there is a commitment to it because children are desperate for that money right now. There are thousands of carers who get nowhere near any carers support and that needs to be addressed before long. Thousands and thousands of people who care for loved ones get no recognition for it.

Back in 2015, I asked our representatives on the Smith commission—Tavish Scott and Michael Moore—to make the case for the transfer of significant welfare powers, because I believed that the non-universal credit items should largely be devolved. I wanted greater synergy with the work of this Parliament. I thought that it was a substantial transfer of powers, but also that it was reasonable. It created a big, multibillion-pound budget. It was not everything that the SNP wanted, but it was significant.

A few months earlier—casting our minds back—the SNP was claiming that it would deliver independence within 16 months. Seven years later, we are not even near the end of the transfer of the benefits—

Ben Macpherson rose—

I have sat in this chamber for 10 years now, and I have repeatedly heard speeches such as this one. As a Liberal, I love discussing all this kind of stuff, but, at some point, we need to deliver. If we look back over the past 15 years, the record is pretty woeful. Surely, we should be discussing actually making things work, rather than having these lofty debates.

I am trying not to be grumpy, but I have to say that SNP ministers love these kinds of debates. They craftily entice us to daydream about the future, to think big, to think out of the box and to look at the stars—to think about things other than what is going on in our country right now—in a desperate attempt to distract us. Today, we get the promise of pilots and action plans; all we need now is a working group and another consultation and then we will have the full set. However, we should look at the reality.

Absolutely. What is worse is that the Government has lumped together all the contracts in a massive leasing round. What does that mean? It means that the work will go abroad, because we will not be able to ramp up the capacity or the workforce to meet demand. There will be a massive glut of work all at the same time. That is hardly community wealth building.

We cannot even manage to build the 54 jackets for the Neart na Gaoithe wind farm in the Forth. We are getting to build just eight jackets. What is even worse is that, as well as jackets being shipped in from the other side of the planet, we are having to ship in workers from Portugal to build those eight jackets in Fife. That is a disgrace; it is not community wealth building. While workers in Methil and Leven are paying, through their electricity bills, for the wind farm to be built, the work is being shipped in from abroad, and so are the workers. That is not community wealth building.

We can look at what Reform Scotland said this week about the big, grand promise—for what has felt like decades—of the Scottish National Investment Bank. Ross Brown, from the University of St Andrews, said that the Government is going to have to make up its mind whether it is a green infrastructure development bank or whether it will invest in communities and small businesses. He said:

“The two are very different objectives and using the same instrument to achieve both seems at best ill-advised and at worst foolhardy.”

That is not investing in our communities, and it is certainly not community wealth building.

Depriving our island communities of their first chance for a decent summer tourism season because of the calamity of the ferry services is also not community wealth building. Bookings will be cancelled because people cannot be sure that they can get to our islands. Just as people on our islands get an opportunity to build some wealth in their communities, it is snatched away from them by an incompetent Government that cannot build two ferries. As a result, people on the islands lose out.

Then, there are the rail services. Across Scotland, 700 rail services have been cancelled by the Government within weeks of it taking control of the trains. Communities across Scotland will have community wealth building opportunities snatched away from them because the Government cannot even run a train service.

That all sounds negative, but it is the reality for people in our communities, so while we have these lofty debates and look to the stars about community wealth building with a grand plan and wonderful pilots, people are suffering. The Parliament needs to keep its feet on the ground and to understand what is happening in our communities, because if it does not it will quickly become out of touch. I am afraid that the Government is already out of touch if it thinks that this debate is a substitute for delivery of services in our communities. Let us get real and have a proper debate about real things.

We are talking about another typical grand promise by the Scottish National Party that has not been delivered. It promised to eradicate delayed discharges completely; we were told that they would be all gone. That was long before the pandemic. Therefore, there is no point in the cabinet secretary pointing at England, the Opposition and everybody else when he is in charge of the policy and has failed to deliver it.

No progress is being made; in fact, we are going backwards on delayed discharges. When will the Government minister accept that the promise to eradicate delayed discharges has not been delivered? When will he deliver a policy that actually works?

There are currently only a few thousand cases for the adult disability payment, but that is due to rise quickly in the next five years to almost 500,000 cases. People depend on that money, so how confident is the minister that everyone will get their money on time, when the ramp-up starts this summer?