In 2018, the First Minister pledged to invest in and expand housing first by supporting 800 people over a three-year period but, as of 31 July, only 540 people had received support through the pathfinder programme. What is the Scottish Government doing to speed up the roll-out across Scotland?

We were the first party to announce plans to expand free school meals to include all primary school pupils, and I am pleased that the Scottish Government has since adopted that policy. We also pledged in our recent election manifesto to double the Scottish child payment. Again, I am glad to see that the Scottish Government is proposing to do the same, but we would like it to happen much more quickly, within the next financial year.

The Scottish Conservatives are committed to tackling the root causes of poverty to ensure that there are equal opportunities for everyone in Scotland. The nationalist coalition is too fixated on holding another referendum on independence to give this important issue the attention that it deserves. We will continue to hold this Government to account for its failings, which have been seen across Scotland for years. I support the amendment in the name of Miles Briggs.

Many people across my region participated in Age Scotland’s big survey of older people, which revealed that more than half of older people had reported that the pandemic had made them lonely. One third felt that their mental health had deteriorated, one third felt that they were seen as a burden to society, and a staggering 71 per cent reported having been targeted by phone scammers. Those figures make for grim reading and are a reminder of how marginalised older people feel in our society. What further action will the Scottish Government take to make sure that those trends are reversed?

I am delighted to take part in this debate on supporting a fairer and more equal society. As a Scottish Conservative, I believe in the principle of equality of opportunity. We have a role to play in ensuring that what people achieve in life is determined not by where they come from, who their parents are or where they went to school but by their drive and determination to succeed. To achieve that, we need to tackle the root causes of poverty in Scotland, but the SNP’s record on tackling poverty is, quite frankly, shocking.

Nearly one in five Scots—which is over a million people—is living in relative poverty after their housing costs are taken into account, and that statistic rises to nearly one in four children across Scotland. Those rates have been gradually rising for the past decade. In the previous parliamentary session, the First Minister claimed that education was her number 1 priority. [Interruption.] I want to make progress. I will take an intervention later.

The First Minister has, in fact, presided over a stubbornly wide attainment gap, which has shown that pupils from more deprived areas are not managing to succeed, and there are no signs of that gap closing across many different measures. The usual excuse for that failing that we hear from the members on the nationalist benches is that they do not have the necessary powers to tackle poverty, but we all know that that is simply not the case.

Despite a range of new welfare powers being devolved in 2016, the SNP has said that it will not be able to successfully implement them until 2025—nine years later. Members should remember that the SNP is also the party that said that it could set up an independent Scotland in just 18 months.

In one case, the social security minister simply had to hand back responsibility for a benefit to the Department for Work and Pensions to avoid “unnecessary duplication”. Even SNP ministers now seem to see the benefits of having some welfare powers on a UK-wide basis.

The proposals put forward by the cobbled-together coalition of nationalists and Greens are even worse, being ill thought out and unaffordable. The new coalition has suggested that it will seek to introduce a universal basic income, but that scheme will simply give with one hand and take with the other. According to documents released under freedom of information by the Scottish Government, the scheme could cost the economy £58 billion a year. The policy appears to have been put forward to appease hardline supporters in the coalition of chaos rather than to target support to those people who need it most.

Another poor suggestion is the introduction of rent controls, which simply do not work and are not supported by economists across the political spectrum. Capping rents will make renting out properties a less attractive prospect for landlords and will lead to a reduction in the supply that is required. We have heard of similar proposals being introduced in Sweden, and people in Stockholm are waiting up to nine years to get a rent control problem resolved. That is yet another flashy policy from a party that is not looking at the real problems but only working towards its goal.

It has been mentioned many times in the debate that the SNP wants the full powers of independence. Unlike the coalition of chaos, the Scottish Conservatives have a real, workable solution to tackle the root causes of poverty and give everyone a chance to succeed. We will deliver the biggest programme of social housing building since the Scottish Parliament reconvened in 1999. We want to assist the construction sector to get back to pre-2007 levels of house building. Instead of introducing debating society proposals such as rent controls, we would address high rents and ensure that supply and demand of houses allowed people to rent and buy.

We would also provide funds for councils, which are delivering many of the front-line services on which the poorest people in our society rely. They have had to deal with swingeing cuts from this chamber and this Government over the past few decades. SNP and Green budgets have done that to councils again and again. We would ensure that increases to the Scottish Government’s budget were passed directly to councils through the funding formula that we would set in place. That would ensure that councils could continue to deliver vital public services.

However, it is important to point out that there are some areas where we are in agreement. [Interruption.]

Cabinet secretary, you talked about the staggering increase in levels of domestic abuse during lockdown in many communities. The police and other organisations and sectors had to be much more robust in tackling it because, as you identified, home was not a safe place for many individuals. The funding that you talked about will go to support that action but, as we saw, there needs to be more of a crossover between agencies and organisations to capture some of what different groups were identifying using different ways and means. Was information about that collated and transmitted to other support mechanisms to ensure that lessons were being learned about how vulnerable some of these people were and the conditions they were living in?

You have pointed out the progress that has been made and have touched on potential new ways of working. Technology, for example, has developed quite rapidly over the past 18 months of the pandemic to tackle loneliness and social isolation. I also believe that some work has been done on intergenerational wellbeing. It would be good to hear your thoughts on those two areas, as they will continue to develop over the next few years and during this parliamentary session. We might have to change direction slightly as we tackle such issues, enforce measures and change how things have been done in the past to ensure that we capture as many individuals as we can who fall into the older age group.

Barriers to technology are also a problem for some people, as they might not have full knowledge and understanding of all the technology that is available to support them. How do we enhance that knowledge and ensure that they are exposed to some of that technology and receive the support and training that they need in that respect?

It is important that people feel comfortable. We have already touched on culture, religion and other aspects, including disability, all of which add to the complexity that an individual might feel they have to break through and the weight of what they want to express. They need to know that whomever they are speaking to will give them support and advice and, as Dr Crowther said, will not open a Pandora’s box that creates a more difficult situation for them in the future. Each of your organisations has an ability to balance that support. LGBT Youth Scotland does it through the youth work sector and others look at a wider area in trying to manage these issues. The challenge is in co-ordinating it.

I thank our witnesses for attending this morning. The discussion has been enlightening.

In her opening statement, Megan Snedden talked about the loneliness, the suffering, the damage and the risks that individuals who identify in certain ways face. I would like to tease out something about the further measures that might be in place to support people. We have heard suggestions that a legislative ban might not be enough to end conversion therapy, and we have taken some evidence from organisations and individuals who have stressed that there needs to be a range of supportive measures in place across many sectors. Those measures might be practical mental health support, education and awareness work, support for survivors, and a range of developments across regulatory standards for professionals in many sectors who might be involved in such support. It is important that we understand that. What further support measures might need to be in place to ensure that a ban is successful in ending conversion therapy?

There is a role for the third sector and social enterprises in all that. What discussions are you having with those sectors to capture their projects and proposals and marry them with your work in Government?

Each of your organisations exists to manage issues and support people, and you all have your ways of doing that. It would be useful to get a flavour of how you identify different needs and how you target support to ensure that survivors and people who are at risk come forward. Each individual is different, and, as you have identified, the experiences that people have gone through can be traumatic. Although some people might not wish to unravel some of those experiences, others might look to do so. How do you strike a balance so that people feel that they have the opportunity to come forward and get the support that they need?