Chamber and committees

I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests. I hold a current NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde staff nurse bank contract. The people who should be at the front of our thoughts are the young people who are affected by this change. What steps are being taken to support the young people who have been affected—those who are accessing and those who are waiting to access services about their care—and their families?

Given the impact of the benefit cap on children, including on their development and their future prospects, does the member not think that that amount of money would be an investment? He should look at some of the waste over which Westminster has presided; we have had high speed 2, the personal protective equipment scandal and all sorts of other things. If Westminster wanted to support those children, it could find the money.

Will the member take an intervention?

We have heard some clarity about Scottish Labour’s position from the MSP point of view. However, Labour UK MPs will make the choices in how they vote, should Labour form the next United Kingdom Government. Which lead will Scottish Labour MPs take? Will they take the one that Anas Sarwar sets, or the one that Keir Starmer seems to be setting?

I will take your intervention.

I agree that the benefits system needs to be looked at. However, I have not seen anything from Labour to say that it is going to scrap the two-child policy. I ask the member to point me to where Keir Starmer has that written down. Then again, would I believe him? He has flip-flopped on so many policies and promises since he got a sniff of getting into number 10 Downing Street.

Notwithstanding the moral arguments for abolishing the cap, it would send a strong signal that we are moving on from austerity and welfare cuts, which have torn the heart out of communities across the UK. I suspect that the reason that Labour does not want to do that is because it has already signed up to the same fiscal rules, and many of the same policies, as the Tories.

I will end on a quote from Becca Lyon, who is the head of child poverty at Save the Children UK. She said:

“This policy is one of the cruellest welfare rules of the past decade. Right now 1.5 million children—one in every ten children growing up in the UK—is affected by it and misses out on £62 a week. This can mean less money for food, children’s clothes, toys and books, and being able to travel to nearby activities and experiences … Scrapping it should be a priority for the current or any future UK government.”

I could not agree more.

I want to focus on one of the specific proposals in the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill, which I hope has broad support across Parliament, the justice sector, support organisations, survivors and the wider public: that of trauma-informed practice. Members will be aware of my background as a mental health nurse, and at this point I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests, in that I hold a bank nurse contact with NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

Victims and witnesses of crime need to be treated with compassion. The lasting effects of trauma can stay with people for decades, affecting their day-to-day functioning, their relationships and their ability to effectively participate in society. I am sure that all of us across the chamber will have heard from numerous constituents over the years about their traumatic experiences in the justice system.

Of course, we cannot remove all risk of traumatisation from the justice system. There is an unavoidable risk that people will be negatively impacted by having to recall traumatic experiences. However, we must take all necessary steps to improve victims’ experience of the justice system so that they can have confidence in it. Doing so has the potential to improve the quality of the justice process for everyone involved.

“Trauma-informed practice” describes a way of working with people that recognises the impact that traumatic experiences may have had on them, and it tries to avoid causing them more trauma. It is based around five core principles: safety, which involves helping people to feel physically and emotionally safe; choice, which involves giving people meaningful choices and a voice in decisions that affect them; collaboration, which involves asking people what they need and involving them in considering how their needs can be met; trust,?which involves being clear so that people know what to expect and people doing what they say they will; and empowerment, which involves validating people’s feelings and supporting people to take decisions.

The bill creates a framework to embed trauma-informed practice across the justice system and support a cultural shift towards trauma-informed ways of working. The provisions in the bill include a legal definition of trauma-informed practice for the justice sector to help to provide clarity and consistency. It requires criminal justice agencies to have regard to trauma-informed practice in their work with victims and witnesses of crime. It requires that the Lord President and certain other members of the judiciary have a legal responsibility to take trauma-informed practice into account in court scheduling. It also has new rules for how court business is conducted, to try to improve victims’ experiences, given that they often describe the way in which a defence is conducted as one of the most distressing aspects of the criminal justice process and say that it can contribute to their retraumatisation.

The bill has been shaped by survivors, victims and their families, and we owe it to them to listen and act on their experiences and concerns. In evidence that was given to the Criminal Justice Committee, a committee witness, Hannah McLaughlan, said:

“Survivors endure trauma as a result of the abuse that they go through, but, having come through the justice system, I would say that I endured trauma not only from my abuser but from the system that is supposed to provide me with justice. That is not acceptable, and it needs to change.”

Similar views have been raised with me by several constituents over the years. A couple of months ago, I met the Minister for Victims and Community Safety to discuss one of my constituents’ experiences in the justice system. I am also to meet the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs with that constituent next month, and I want to place on the record my gratitude to the cabinet secretary and the minister.

One of the issues that my constituent raised was the standard of communication throughout the court process. My constituent’s attacker faced 11 charges, but to avoid going to court, they pled guilty to a reduced number of four charges. My constituent, as a victim, was not consulted on that by the Procurator Fiscal Service. I note that, in its stage 1 scrutiny, the committee looked at the standard of communication in justice agencies. It is clear that communication must improve, and I welcome the Lord Advocate’s acknowledgement that she agrees with the importance of improving communication.

The committee’s report also says that legislation is not necessarily required to deliver some improvements. That is echoed by the Law Society of Scotland’s response to the committee’s call for written evidence, in which it said:

“Achieving a properly trauma-informed system requires much more than legislative change.”

During the past few weeks, we have seen steps such as the introduction of the pilot to increase access to court transcripts. Victims of serious sexual assault can understandably find it difficult to hear and process what is said in court at the time. Victims being able to obtain transcripts and review exactly what was said in court in their own time can help with recovery.

In addition, as the report refers to, some organisations are already working to make their processes trauma-informed. For example, Police Scotland has indicated that trauma-informed practice is already embedded in some aspects of its work. The Crown Office has developed trauma-informed training, which has been used by 2,000 employees and 70 advocate deputes. However, part 2 of the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill will complement that work and accelerate change in the criminal justice system.

The bill will put victims and witnesses at the heart of the justice system. Building on their experiences, key reforms will make justice services more sensitive to the trauma that they can cause. For too long, some victims and survivors have been let down and ignored by the justice system. Let us make sure that they do not feel the same way about the political system by voting in favour of the reforms today.

I absolutely would not recognise that. In fact, the majority of people condemn the callous welfare cuts and the austerity agenda that your party supports and promotes.

In contrast, the Scottish National Party Government is doing everything that it can to prevent families in Scotland from falling into poverty. The Scottish Government has spent more than £1 billion on protecting Scottish households from the impacts of 13 years of Tory austerity and policies. That spend, including the Scottish child payment, has helped lift 100,000 children out of poverty in Scotland. Without the full powers of independence, however, our work on tackling child poverty is hampered by the actions of Westminster.

The Child Poverty Action Group argues that

“Abolishing the two-child limit is the most cost-effective way of reducing child poverty—it would lift 250,000 children out of poverty, and a further 850,000 children would be in less deep poverty at a”

relatively modest

“cost of just £1.3 billion.”

Staggeringly, the Prime Minister revealed at the weekend that, purely for ideological reasons, he will keep the two-child benefit cap if the Conservatives win the next election. That has nothing do with cost; rather, making kids poor appears to be Sunak’s political priority, and he evidently does not care about the long-term costs of keeping the cap in place.

Thankfully, this heartless Tory Government looks unlikely to win the next general election, but we cannot pin our hopes on Labour either. If Labour is serious about tackling child poverty and breaking down barriers to opportunity, abolishing the two-child limit should be one of the first things that it does when it gets the keys to number 10. The Resolution Foundation estimates that by the end of the decade, the benefit cap and the two-child limit are due to drive the majority of large families into poverty, yet Labour has, time and again, failed to commit to scrapping the limit if it gets into office.

I have a question for the Labour MSPs sitting in the chamber today—all three of them. Isn’t that marvellous? As the party of the working people, do you really believe that it is acceptable for children across Scotland to suffer, simply because of the number of siblings they have? We know that the Tories thrive on monstering people who are in receipt of benefits, but it is shocking that Labour is taking the same line.

I thank all the MSPs who signed my motion, and I am very grateful to all those who are in the chamber for the debate.

This year, 2024, marks the seventh anniversary of the United Kingdom Government’s introduction of the callous two-child benefit cap and the associated rape clause. The policies were the brainchild of the former Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, who announced in 2015 that, as part of a series of harsh welfare cuts, the UK Government would limit child tax credit and universal credit to the first two children in most households. As a result, the majority of families with a third or subsequent child born after April 2017 have been ineligible for additional tax credit or universal credit for that child, and support provided to families who made a new claim for universal credit after that date has also been limited to two children.

The policy affects 1,420 households in South Lanarkshire, which is the local authority that serves my Rutherglen constituency. It means that younger siblings are missing out on the £62 per week that their older siblings receive from the state, which equates to a total loss of £3,200 a year per extra child for families in receipt of universal credit or legacy benefits.

Within the details of the two-child limit policy announcement, the Tories buried their cruel rape clause exemption. The UK Government announced that it would

“develop protections for women who have a third child as the result of rape”.

The word “protections” is hardly the one that I would use, given that the workaround is that women have been required to fill out an eight-page form in order to prove that they have been raped. Under the process, women need to show documents such as a criminal injuries compensation scheme award, or provide available evidence of a conviction for rape. What a heartless and horrific process. Year after year, that cruel policy has forced women to relive the trauma of sexual assault in order to claim the support that they, and their children, need in order to live.

A common argument from the UK Tory Government, in trying to sell its regressive welfare cuts, is that they are supposed to incentivise parents into work. However, a 2023 study from the London School of Economics and Political Science, found

“no evidence that capping child benefits increases employment.”

According to Save the Children, 60 per cent of families affected by the two-child limit

“have at least one adult in paid employment”,

and

“the remaining non-working households”

might

“include a parent with a disability or health issues, or a parent who acts as a full-time carer.”

The policy has plunged a rising number of children into poverty, placing them into a cycle of poverty that not only harms their experiences in childhood but impacts on their long-term opportunities and life chances. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation reports that, at 43 per cent, the poverty rate for children in families with three or more children was almost twice as high as the poverty rate for children in one-child or two-child families in 2021-22—which is 23 per cent and 22 per cent respectively—as a result of UK welfare policies such as the two-child benefit limit.

It is worth looking at the UK’s two-child limit policy in an international context, too. Research from the London School of Economics shows that only three European Union countries—Cyprus, Romania and Spain—restrict their benefits by family size, but they do so at three or four children. Indeed, in many countries, benefits actually increase with family size.

In the UK, the two-child cap affects 1.5 million children, or one in 10, with more than 87,000 children impacted in Scotland, and it has been estimated that

“under a fully rolled out two-child limit ... 590,000 more children would be in relative poverty than if the two-child limit did not exist.”

Can the First Minister confirm to the WASPI women—women against state pension inequality—who are watching this question time and to those who are protesting outside Parliament today that the Scottish Government stands with and supports them in their continuing battle with the United Kingdom Government for compensation? Will he personally lend his weight to urge UK ministers to bring forward a compensation plan for my Rutherglen constituents and other WASPI women across Scotland with the utmost urgency?