Chamber and committees

Today, the Office for National Statistics confirmed that 100,000 Scots are living with long Covid. However, an answer to a parliamentary question that I received last week said—astonishingly—that fewer than 1 per cent of those people have been referred to Scotland’s long Covid support service, which is the principal Government-funded service for long Covid sufferers. I know that Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland, which delivers that service, is desperate to help more sufferers, but the Government has yet to instruct the care pathways that will see people referred to it. Will the First Minister intervene and sort that out?

I am very pleased to rise for my party to speak in favour of the incredibly important motion on a matter that is impacting families up and down the country. I thank Jackie Baillie for using time from the Labour Party’s parliamentary debating time to bring it before us.

Presiding Officer, you would be hard pressed at the moment to go more than a day or so without hearing about the rising cost of food and soaring fuel and energy prices. As we have heard many times this afternoon, we are already living through a cost of living crisis that is hitting families and individuals hard, and from all directions.

The consumer price index shows that the cost of food and drink has been climbing every year, and is up significantly from January 2020. The UK’s biggest supermarket chain, Tesco, has already said that its prices could be set to rise by 5 per cent, and poverty campaigners have highlighted finding that foods such as rice and pasta—which are staples—have risen by as much as 340 per cent in some locations.

That is against a backdrop of skyrocketing energy costs. Just today, as we have also heard several times, the energy regulator Ofgem has announced that the price cap will rise by £693 on average, which will cause the bill of the average customer to rise to up to £1,971. It will be worse for pre-paying customers. That is not to mention the rising cost of fuel, rent and taxes, as all the while wages stagnate. Inflation will this year reach its highest level in 30 years. The painful reality is that the people who are on the lowest incomes are feeling the impact most acutely.

All that has taken its toll. Citizens Advice Scotland has found that a third of Scots—I repeat, a third—are worried about being able to pay for food and other essentials. That means that parents will be facing the anxiety of not being able to provide for their children, and that some pensioners will be anxious about not being able to heat their homes.

In this Parliament, we have a sacred duty to recognise the challenges that our constituents are facing and to act on their behalf to mitigate them. Therefore, I am pleased to support the spirit and the proposals that are contained in Jackie Baillie’s motion, including the proposal on the warm homes discount; my party has been calling for it to be doubled and to be extended to all those who are in receipt of universal credit.

Liberal Democrats also want the national insurance tax hike to be scrapped, which would save families hundreds of pounds a year. Our plans also include forcing broadband providers to offer vulnerable customers cheaper deals through social tariffs, which would benefit up to 8 million households and save them up to £270 each, every year.

The Scottish Government often talks a good game when it comes to tackling those issues, but when push comes to shove, it has been found wanting. With its latest budget, it will heap on more misery with yet more cuts to local authorities, which will force council tax increases and cuts to the services that people rely on most, just when Scots are at their lowest financial ebb.

My party recognises that the impacts of poverty and hunger can be wide reaching. Studies have shown that they can be major factors in preventing children from achieving their potential.

We also support an enhanced carers allowance in Scotland and are calling for an immediate UK-wide uplift of £1,000 for a year.

In recounting her own story, the journalist and anti-poverty campaigner Jack Monroe paints a very bleak picture of the choices that far too many people in our society face:

“After you’ve cut back everything else, food is the last to go. I didn’t mind putting an extra jumper on if I had food in the fridge. It was the point where I had an extra jumper on and no food in the fridge that I realised things had gone”

terribly “badly wrong.”

In this day and age, no one in this country should have to make such a choice, but with the cost of living crisis, we find that all too many will.

This time last year, the rate resolution was agreed to against the backdrop of a country coming out of a second lockdown. Many millions remained on furlough, and the scale of critical public borrowing was so colossal that tax increases would have been quickly consumed.

Thankfully, we are in a significantly better position now than we were then in respect of the virus, but many people’s personal finances are no less precarious now than they were then. The cost-of-living crisis hangs heavy over the debate. Energy prices, food prices and rail prices are already squeezing people from left, right and centre. Inflation forecasts, the national insurance hike and the potential 50 per cent uplift in the energy cap mean that more pain is to come.

That is why it is important for the income tax system to provide stability at this time. We do not propose substantial changes to the rates and bands of Scottish income tax. Over the parliamentary session, there should be appropriate and affordable indexation of the thresholds.

Systems need time to bed in. There is a lot to be said for allowing alterations to the tax regime to take effect, so that behavioural change can be properly measured. The pandemic’s disruptive impact has made that picture all the murkier.

However, it would be remiss not to recognise the income tax issues that the Parliament will need to navigate—we have heard something of them. Our Parliament is maturing. We have come a long way since John Swinney, as finance secretary, unilaterally allowed Holyrood’s tax-varying powers to lapse in 2007 and did not tell the Parliament that he had done that until 2010.

Scottish Liberal Democrats have fought hard for tax powers every step of the way. Having such powers means facing up to the challenges and responsibilities that come with them, which cannot be avoided. We can look to the Scottish Fiscal Commission, among others, to provide clarity. The SFC points to the pressures that will come from having what it calls

“slightly slower growth in income tax revenue than the rest of the UK but faster growth in social security spending.”

Professor Graeme Roy from the University of Glasgow summarised the problem succinctly for the Finance and Public Administration Committee. He said:

“When the fiscal framework was signed up to and we agreed to have greater devolution, there was an acceptance that risk would be built in around Scotland’s economic performance relative to that of the UK. What has been striking is that, since that devolution of taxes, that risk has all gone in a negative way, in that Scotland has been underperforming relative to the UK as a whole.”—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 14 December 2021; c 28-9.]

What should be additional spending power for the Parliament is being offset by growth in income tax in Scotland lagging behind that in the rest of the UK. We have lower productivity, an ageing population and slow growth in average earnings across Scotland, compared with more rapid growth in earnings elsewhere in the UK, which is underpinned by financial services.

All those issues are structural and cannot be resolved by altering the income tax rates and bands that are before us. How those rates and bands deliver for Scotland will be traced back to how the Government and the Parliament respond to the structural issues.

Rachael Hamilton talks about stamping out electoral fraud. How many cases of electoral fraud should we stamp out by disenfranchising many dozens more people who will be inhibited, deterred or stopped from registering to vote because of some of the barriers to access that her party intends to introduce?

This is a very pleasant fiction that Murdo Fraser is casting about our democracy, but is he not aware that, if someone does not have their polling card, they will be required to produce ID at a polling station and that there are means of identifying who is voting and who is not?

I rise to support the Government motion and the Labour amendment, and to oppose the UK Government’s Elections Bill, and I will tell you for why, Presiding Officer.

Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the most influential political thinkers that our islands have produced, famously argued for universal suffrage because of the simple fact that it gives us power over ourselves. Democracy gives each and every one of us power over our lives, our communities and our country. For that reason, it must be protected at all costs. That is why Liberal Democrats across the United Kingdom are horrified by the implications of the Elections Bill for our country.

At the last general election, more than 2.5 million Scots turned out to vote. They did so to send politicians to represent their interests in a Parliament that houses the representatives and ideas of our four nations. That practice is being put in great jeopardy by the bill.

The particularly startling measure that I will focus on first is voter identification. It is being introduced despite, as we have heard several times, there being manifestly low levels of voter fraud: there were only six cases at the last general election.

A driving licence costs £34 to obtain, a passport will set you back £75 and people will come up against additional accessibility barriers. International research has shown that photo ID requirements disadvantage marginalised groups. Graham Simpson today asked a topical question about the difficulties that people have had in obtaining bus passes due to photo ID requirements. Those are precisely the groups that, historically, have been continually marginalised and pushed away from the democratic process. It could cost up to £18 million to place further exclusions on our democratic system.

We have heard a lot about Republican politics in America, and rightly so. The inspirational Stacey Abrams said of Republican politics:

“Voter suppression works its might by first tripping and causing to stumble the unwanted voter, then by convincing those who see the obstacle course to forfeit the race without even starting to run.”

We have to call the approach what it is: it is nothing less than voter suppression.

At the heart of Liberal ideology is the belief in unfettered free speech and democracy. That is why my colleagues in Westminster have been tirelessly fighting to expand the reach of democracy—not to restrict it, as the bill will do. They have voted against the bill at every turn.

Alongside that, Liberals in Westminster have fought campaigns to broaden the scope of proportional representation, to defend the Electoral Commission and to preserve the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011.

The main focus of the debate is, quite rightly, the Orwellian nature of the bill. However, we should also look at the inner workings of our democracy in Scotland. After all, no institution is perfect. The Scottish Liberal Democrats have for a while noted with concern that there is no process at Holyrood for the recall of an elected representative when that is appropriate. I take a moment to reiterate our call for the introduction of a recall system here. Moreover, my party has campaigned for a new contempt of Parliament rule, to ensure that Holyrood has the final say in the business of this Parliament.

Democracy, once it has been introduced in a country, does not become a permanent feature; it is an active process that requires continual growth, enfranchisement and protection. That is why Scottish Liberal Democrats stress the need to strengthen the links between local government and Holyrood, so that democratically elected councils can properly implement the decisions that their local communities elect them to take.

Democracy should never be taken for granted. People around the world, particularly women and members of marginalised groups, have fought and died for it, and continue to do so. As the bill makes blisteringly clear, we still have a fight for our democracy on our hands. Although the bill might not have a direct impact on this Parliament and this building, it will directly impact on our constituents and the votes that they cast in the next general election.

The UK Elections Bill represents an existential threat to our democratic system. We need to offer solidarity to, and to work hard with, our neighbours across the United Kingdom to ensure that our democratic institutions, here and in the rest of the UK, remain uninhibited and far reaching. That is the cornerstone of our society.

We have just heard from Jackie Baillie why we need to limit the impact of Covid in our classrooms. That is why air quality and air flow matter. It was, therefore, astonishing to learn this morning, from the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills herself, that 2,000 classrooms in Scotland currently fall below standards for air quality.

In addition, this morning, I was passed a paper that was commissioned by the City of Edinburgh Council, but is confidential and has been kept from the public since last May, which shows the extent of the problem. All but two of the schools that were surveyed for that report failed air-quality CO₂ threshold tests. During all that time parents, pupils and teachers have been kept in the dark.

Does the First Minister recognise that she has not been open with us on air quality in schools, and will she now publish all the data that her Government currently holds about school classroom air quality, so that we can make up our minds about whether what I have described is just the tip of the iceberg?

The principle of setting multiyear budgets is about recognising things such as the spend-to-save principle. Does the cabinet secretary not recognise that an investment in social care with a meaningful uplift in social care pay will see us reduce delayed discharge and the massive cost that that creates to the public purse?

On Holocaust memorial day, I say on behalf of the Scottish Liberal Democrats that, although the actions and the murderous regime of the Nazis are passing out of living memory, they haunt us still. We have a duty to remember and to pass on that knowledge to future generations, and to work together to ensure that atrocity and genocide can never again happen in this world.

To ask the First Minister when the Cabinet will next meet. (S6F-00713)

I speak in this afternoon’s debate for the Liberal Democrats. As with all other budgets, the Liberal Democrats approached the budget that we debate today in good faith and with an open mind, but I am afraid that a considerable gulf still exists between our position and that of the Government on that budget. I will come on to the detail as to why that is the case.

When Governments set budgets, they must look, first and foremost, to the most vulnerable in our society and build their offer around them as a matter of principle. It is not clear that that has happened in relation to the budget that is before us today. Although it is a matter of public record that the Scottish Liberal Democrats support the doubling of the child payment, in this budget what the SNP Government gives with one hand, it takes away with another. Scottish families—especially those below the poverty line—are being hit hard from all angles. With the cost of food and energy soaring, and with the rise in national insurance and the cut to universal credit, many people are feeling the squeeze like never before. It is not clear that the budget recognises that reality.

The UK’s biggest supermarket, Tesco, has said that its prices could be set to rise by around 5 per cent. Energy costs are reaching an all-time high, while wages are stagnating because of inflation, which, this year, will reach its highest level in nearly 30 years. Citizens Advice Scotland has found that a third of Scots are worried about being able to pay for food and other essentials. That means that parents will face the anxiety of not being able to provide for their children, which is not a good reflection on government in our country.

We need to reflect that crushing reality in the Budget (Scotland) Bill that we pass but, instead, we see cuts—they are cuts—to local government. That will result in an unavoidable rise in council tax, which will compound that reality still further.