Chamber and committees

I draw members’ attention to my entry in the register of interests, which shows that I am an owner of a rental property.

Guidance issued by the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing notes:

“Housing has become the front line defence against the coronavirus.”

That simple statement is absolutely fundamental to the debate. A good, safe, warm and accessible home is a basic human right and something that every person needs if they are to flourish and reach their full potential. However, for the purposes of the debate, it is clear that a home is the front-line defence against this disease. If someone has Covid-19 symptoms, if they have been in close contact with a positive case or if a member of their household has symptoms, they have to isolate at home. If someone has been to an amber list country or if they have Covid-19, they have to isolate at home. From the outset of the pandemic, the key medical and public health advice to stop the spread of the disease and break the transmission link has been that people should isolate at home.

The reason why the ban on evictions has been a key part of our response to the pandemic is that it is a key part of the strategy to contain the spread of coronavirus. How can individuals or families have certainty that they will be able to isolate at home when they have the threat of eviction hanging over their heads? How can someone who has been evicted and who is sofa surfing in multiple properties isolate at home? Given that isolating at home is a key part of the public health response, the bill must extend the evictions ban to level 1 and 2 areas.

There is that public health argument for extending the evictions ban, but there is clearly a moral argument, too. The Scottish Government has rightly called for an extension to furlough and to the £20 top-up in universal credit. The Government has made those arguments because we are still living with restrictions and because entire sections of the economy are either severely impacted or not functioning at all.

Less than three weeks ago, the First Minister said:

“We have made significant progress on the way out of this pandemic, which has devastated the lives of so many. But we are clearly still in a precarious situation, and it is vital to make sure that we support the people who have been most badly affected by the past 14 months.”

She went on:

“I will be calling on it”—

that is, the UK Government—

“to commit to maintain public spending during the period of recovery, and to extend the furlough scheme for as long as it is needed to protect businesses and people who have been required to stop working to protect others, and I will be emphasising that it is managed sensitively in a way that supports longer term recovery.”

I do not disagree with any of that, but surely the Scottish ministers must accept that the exact same arguments apply to the extension of the evictions ban. Many households have been affected by unemployment, reduced employment and reduced earnings. Lots of people have accumulated debts and rent arrears through no fault of their own and because of a global pandemic. We should support those people with grant assistance to recover, rather than piling more debts on top of existing debt just so that they can stay in their family homes. I am therefore glad that the Government has announced today that it is moving on that issue.

The tenants organisation Living Rent warned of

“a cliff edge of orders to evict”

in the event of the country entering level 2. Statistics from the Scottish Housing Regulator show that, from June last year to March this year, the number of notices of proceedings relating to a rise in rent arrears being served on social housing tenants increased by 280 per cent. Citizens Advice Scotland has reported that, from 2019 to 2020, requests for advice about rent arrears with private landlords more than doubled.

The Scottish Government’s £10 million tenant hardship loan fund was supposed to help people to avoid the risk of losing their homes because of pandemic-related financial pressures but, so far, as the member who spoke before me set out, only £490,000 has been paid out. It is not a viable solution to people’s housing debt to put them into more debt. I welcome the Government’s grant fund and I am interested to see the new qualifying criteria for it. I am also interested in how the Government intends to convert into grants the almost £0.5 million of loans that have been paid out, so that those who have already accessed the fund do not have to live with unsustainable debt.

What will happen if evictions go ahead in the absence of a ban? Who will pick up the pieces? We will be left with families being pushed into extremely dangerous and vulnerable positions in the middle of a pandemic. Local authorities will be left to deal with a surge in homelessness applications. People will no longer be able to rely on the top-level public health and medical advice to isolate at home, because they will have no home available to them.

A revolving door of evictions and homelessness applications, along with all the human and financial costs and public health risks associated with that, is not what anyone wants.

I draw members’ attention to my entry in the register of members’ interests.

It is not unreasonable to say that tackling poverty and striving to make Scotland fairer has always been a mission for the Parliament. We might not have previously declared it a national mission, but it is fairly clear to anyone who has been watching proceedings since the establishment of the Parliament that we agree on that.

It appears that there is enough agreement on policy solutions that there has been real and genuine debate about how those solutions might be implemented. The cabinet secretary, my Labour colleagues and others have spoken about the need to retain the £20 uplift. They also spoke about the ambition to double the child payment to £20 per week, although Pam Duncan-Glancy underlined the importance of doing so immediately.

Miles Briggs talked about supporting those, particularly carers, who are recently bereaved. We fully support a change to the carers allowance entitlement to give people the space to grieve and think about how to go forward with their lives after the sad loss of someone they cared for. As did almost every other party speaker who took part in the hustings during the election, I agree with Jeremy Balfour that we should look at the 20-metre rule. We should also look at how we deal with the regulations that will come before the successor to the Social Security Committee and at how we adapt the system to fit the needs of the people of Scotland—we must not just lift and shift the system that is already in place and that discriminates against so many.

What Richard Leonard said should ring true in any debate, but particularly in this one. How can we talk about poverty reduction and eradication without talking about taxation and redistribution of wealth? We cannot talk about such matters in a vacuum.

Pauline McNeill outlined some of the positive changes that we agreed during the progress of the bill that became the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018; however, the changes have not been implemented because the Parliament still does not have full control over those powers, many of which still lie with the DWP.

Much of the build-up to the debate focused on the powers that we do not have, as opposed to the people who face daily battles to pay the rent, put food on the table and get through the pandemic. It is no secret that the Labour Party supports the devolution of employment law. I believe that employment law will be devolved to this Parliament, but such powers will not, of themselves, help anyone overnight. However, a minimum income guarantee, a doubled child payment and a mandatory real living wage in our procurement contracts would help.

As a member of the Social Security Committee for the whole of the previous parliamentary session, and like Jeremy Balfour and others, I am disappointed that so long after we reached consensus across the chamber on how to set up the new system, social security benefits are still not fully administered here in Scotland, such that we could adapt them to the needs of the people who live here.

In the previous session, the Social Security Committee also secured landmark, stretching child poverty targets with which many of us here today agreed. However, we also agreed that we might struggle to hit them. We have powers that we could use to hit those targets—we have powers that would give us a role in employment, which the Government could use to immediately reset its relationship with workers and employers.

I have proposed that we put workers and trade union members who have experience of workplace disease and injury in the driving seat to design a policy process for the replacement of the industrial injuries benefit, which is a key benefit for those who are disabled at work. I hope that the cabinet secretary agrees that that is an example of how we could use the powers that we have now to make the system fairer, particularly for people who are living with long Covid. We should look at the gender gap and note that payments of that benefit are made overwhelmingly to men and those who work in male-dominated industries.

The interventions made by the UK and Scottish Governments, which have been implemented by a formidable army of key workers in local government, have been nothing short of astonishing. There have been problems, but the measures have been powerful nonetheless. Furlough, business rates holidays, year-round free school meals, and the £20 uplift in payments for carers and low-income families were all designed to protect livelihoods while lockdown sought to save lives. Measures were implemented quickly using the powers that we have, because there was the political will to do so. They might have been delivered under emergency powers, but there is nothing stopping us using emergency powers again to tackle the emergency that is poverty.

Last spring, we banned evictions and took people off the streets and into warmth and safety. Will we risk another homelessness epidemic when the pandemic is over or as we ease our way out of restrictions? The manifesto of every party represented in the chamber said that every family in Scotland should have access to a warm, safe home. As the Shelter briefing says, the pandemic did not cause the housing emergency but it has exposed it as never before. I ask the cabinet secretary and her ministers to consider extending the ban on evictions. We have called for an extension to the furlough and the £20 uplift; we should also call for and agree an extension to the evictions ban.

The debate should be about what we can do to support families and people who need help now; it should not be about further constitutional arguments. I ask members to support our amendment and reject those that kick things into the long grass. Let us get to work now to change Scotland.

took the oath.