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Thank you.

Ben Macpherson will understand that I believe that we should use the powers that we have and that we should be open to the fact that the whole economy should run in a different way, in order to benefit those in society who need the most from us.

I say again to the SNP and the Conservatives: think again. It is only when every child does well that we will all do well. There is enough wealth and resources to ensure bread and roses for everyone. What is lacking is the political will of Governments to make it happen. To not think like that is to let down those who have been impacted for decades by poor policy decisions and lack of radical thought.

I want to be clear from the outset that I deplore the Tory Government attacks on working-class people. The Tories are the friends of the rich and show no interest in redistributing wealth to those most in need. That was only reaffirmed by yesterday’s spring statement by the chancellor, which tinkers around the edges and fails to recognise the scale of the cost of living crisis, and instead puts more financial pressure on working families and makes it more difficult to alleviate the situation of children in poverty. Our children, our communities and the entire country deserve so much more.

However, as an MSP here in this chamber at this moment in time, it is my job to hold this Scottish Government to account, and I ask it to do more. I ask it whether it is doing absolutely everything that it can do to eradicate child poverty. I ask the back benchers whether, at every opportunity, they ask their front-bench members to do more.

Members should not just listen to me, but listen to the Trussell Trust and Save the Children and their report, “Tackling Child Poverty and Destitution”. I will give some consideration to the policies that they believe the Scottish Government needs to take forward to tackle child poverty targets.

Although a commitment to increase the Scottish child payment—after several months of intense pressure from Scottish Labour—is welcome, as is today’s announcement of an increase to £25 before the end of the year, I ask the Scottish Government to listen to us once again and double the Scottish child payment from £20 to £40 by April next year. I will go on to say why it should do that.

Amid a cost of living crisis for many, the likes of which we have never seen before, it is absolutely pivotal that those most in need are supported financially to put food on the table and ensure that, despite the difficulties placed on all of us by the pandemic and the immediate cost of living crisis, the Scottish Government’s child poverty targets are met. That is what we all want.

We know that the Scottish child payment contributes massively towards tackling child poverty, and it alleviates pressure on families in receipt of it, but we cannot ignore the fact that, even with the progress made, the payment’s roll-out has to be quicker and more effectively targeted, and the amount of the payment has to increase further. Although the Scottish Government has come forward with an optimistic prediction today, many organisations believe that failure to deliver that will likely lead to the Scottish Government’s failure to meet some of its child poverty targets. It is unacceptable to even take that chance.

If the Scottish Government is going to tackle child poverty properly, surely its priority must be to listen to the experts, work with precision and purpose, and deliver the changes needed to alleviate the barriers of poverty, which hinder so many children. I remind the Government that that starts by ending the incessant cuts to local government.

Scottish Labour’s plan to address this huge challenge is clear: increase the child payment, invest in local services, tackle the cost of living crisis, show ambition and show strategy for that ambition. I believe that the SNP-Green Government wants to do something about child poverty, but it is up to it to decide whether it will actually do everything that it can. Scottish Labour will always be on the side of working families and those living in poverty. Again, I say to SNP and Green back benchers: come and join us and call on the Scottish Government to use all the might of the Scottish Parliament in tackling the number 1 priority—to save thousands of children from the dire impact of poverty.

It is my view that the overarching priority of the Scottish Parliament should be to tackle, reduce and eradicate child poverty.

Child poverty is a huge challenge that faces our country. It limits opportunity for children in every town and deepens the inequalities that already exist in our society, from the second that the child is born. It should shame us all that child poverty remains as prevalent as it does in our country today. We stand in this chamber, week in and week out, discussing the modern, inclusive and progressive Scotland that we think exists when, in reality, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, between 2017 and 2020, almost one in four children were living in relative poverty and more than one in five children were living in absolute poverty. That is nothing short of a national disgrace and we must redouble our efforts to address it every day. Figures like that represent not just a number but a dark and difficult reality for so many children and their families across Scotland. It is unjust and unacceptable, and we in this chamber must do all that we can to fix it.

Therefore, we must look at the dilemma that faces parents today. They bring their children up in a Scotland where the richest continue to own the wealth, while those who are most deprived in our most deprived areas work on low wages in order to create that wealth. That is not a modern, inclusive or progressive Scotland; it is far from it. It is, in fact, representative of a Scotland that has two Governments—at Holyrood and Westminster—that are bereft of ideas and often focused on other matters. I say to the SNP and the Conservatives—think again, because it is only when every child does well that we will all do well.

As we have heard, the port at Cairnryan provided a lot to the local community. What assessment has the Government made, or will it make, of the impact that the decision might have locally? What support will be provided to those workers and communities in the wake of this absolutely appalling decision?

We all know that the benefits of active travel are wide ranging, from its environmental benefits to those for the health and wellbeing of the population. We should place significant focus on encouraging and facilitating active travel, which is why I reiterate that the Scottish Labour’s amendment calls for 10 per cent of the transport budget to be allocated to it.

We do not make that request without reason. Today’s debate has recognised the progress that we have made, but we must focus on what more there is still to do. Isolation, poor housing, health inequalities and poor transport links impact the poorest and most vulnerable in our society more than anyone else. It is therefore crucial that any active travel plan has the livelihood and opportunities of those in our most-deprived areas at its core.

Yes, we can welcome investments in e-bikes, cycling and walking paths, and more. However, those investments do little to improve the health outcomes for those who are most in need if we do not bring them closer to our communities and make it as feasible as possible for people to use active travel routes.

Equitable access to active travel is a factor in tackling health inequalities, which must be a priority for Parliament. We know that health inequalities create some of the biggest challenges that Scottish society faces. As my colleague Neil Bibby mentioned, for active travel to become a successful reality, it is crucial that the Scottish Government improves its performance in two areas where it has failed recently.

First, the SNP must stop cutting local government services. With political will and pressure from SNP back benchers, the Government could create high-quality, well-funded, accessible and affordable services, including active travel services, up and down the country. To cut the budgets of councils—thus cutting their ability to provide solid travel infrastructure—and then come to the chamber today with a self-congratulatory motion should shame SNP and Green MSPs, who stood on a manifesto of investment but have presided over horrific cuts to the services on which our communities rely.

Further, cutting train services and increasing the costs of train travel amid a cost-of-living crisis puts a strain on the pockets of millions and will not encourage people to choose active travel. It is vital that more people choose to walk, cycle or use public transport instead of a car, for the sake of future generations and our planet. However, we must make that choice a clear and easy one to make. The Scottish Government has failed in that regard.

Active travel is a worthwhile cause to pursue, so I am glad that we are having this debate. I had the privilege of joining Paths for All at Kilmarnock train station in my constituency. I walked through one of the newly installed active travel routes there, and it was clear to me how beneficial those routes could be if they were rolled out properly and more widely.

However, we have to get the basics right. We have to take a gendered approach to those routes, to ensure that they are accessible to women and that women feel safe on them, and they must be accessible to other vulnerable groups, such as the young, the elderly and the disabled. We have to invest in rail and bus services to keep them frequent and close to communities, with low fares. We have to ensure that active travel routes serve those whom health inequalities impact the most.

In doing so, we will take steps towards improving the health and lifestyle outcomes of those who have been worst impacted by the cuts of the Scottish and UK Governments in recent years, and we will give the active travel plan for Scotland the best chance of being successful. Therefore, I urge colleagues to back the Scottish Labour amendment this evening.

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the number of low-income households that will not be eligible for the £150 payment to help tackle the rising cost of living. (S6O-00876)

A new study from Energy Action Scotland has revealed that as many as 211,000 additional people in Scotland—a 43 per cent rise from 2019—are set to fall victim to fuel poverty this year. Almost all of them are in households that already have low incomes. Is it correct that the system that is proposed by the Scottish Government, which distributes the payment via council tax banding, will spread support too thinly, and that low-income households, who, proportionately, will suffer more as a result, will not receive the targeted support that they need?

There will be no overnight fix but I ask that we continue with this important work. Thank you, Presiding Officer

I thank everyone who has spoken so far in this necessary debate for their contributions. I would like to focus on the problems that are evident in our prisons. When we talk about problems with substance misuse, we are really talking about people who have, for one reason or another, slipped through the net. In so many cases, they will encounter some form of the justice system along that path.

Fortunately, we now seem to be at the point at which the majority recognises that simply locking up someone with a serious addiction will not make that problem go away. Evidence shows that prison stays only exacerbate existing substance misuse problems, leaving a legacy of addiction and distress.

Whether prisons can be reformed to prevent that and provide the opportunity for more sustainable rehabilitation is perhaps a wider debate, but it is one that we dearly need to have. We will not be able to get through all that today, but we can say that the current model is not working.

Where there should be adequate support to get drug users back on their feet, there is far too often still more of a focus on abstinence and a lack of effective intervention to look at a person’s misuse from a long-term perspective.

Above all, the most significant barrier to any progress is the massive overcrowding within our prison system. The incredibly hard-working healthcare staff who work in prisons are already facing unimaginable pressures and, on top of that, they must manage time constraints that in any ordinary circumstances would be deemed to be completely unacceptable. There are so few of them, and so many people who need help.

As always, just like a vast number of the problems that we speak about in the chamber, we expect exceptional results, but we seem to be unwilling to fund them.

If we insist on sending so many people there, it is time that we viewed prison as a unique opportunity to address many of the health inequalities that blight the worst off in our society. However, because of the same pressures on the entire NHS, with the added problems of working in a fractious and poorly managed environment, that will always be difficult to achieve for staff who feel like they are not being supported. In order to give them that support, we need to be honest with the public that, if we are to tackle the drug problem in this country and make our justice system more effective, we will require greater investment and a much longer-term approach, which are two things that the world of politics is often poorly prepared to deal with.

If we continue to address each problem individually, it will take a great deal of time to make any headway. However, as members will expect, my position is a socialist one of understanding that the root of all these problems is socioeconomic inequality that has gone on for generations and will continue for generations to come if more is not done. If we do not seriously tackle the low-pay, high-debt, exorbitant-housing-cost society that we have built, reliance on substances to deal with the pressure will only get worse. The minute that someone is made homeless or put on the cusp of homelessness through losing a job or unaffordable rents, their mental and physical health will rapidly deteriorate and the likelihood that they will look to substances to alleviate that pressure will increase. Those are largely the people who end up in our prisons. I ask again, why are we not dealing with this problem at the source?

Scottish Labour believes that we must begin to look at the several decades in which drug misuse has spiralled out of control in Scotland, and we have come to the conclusion that that should be a top priority for every Government, not just here in Edinburgh, but also in London, and it needs to remain a priority for a long time to come.

Yes—I will do so very quickly as I know that we are tight for time.

Is there somewhere to which you could direct the committee where we could ask for that work to be done? Would it be NES? Where could we get that work progressed?

That is lovely. Thanks very much.