Chamber and committees

Colin, I know that you have to leave, so I come to you next.

I have another question about that, which will take us off on another tangent.

Okay. I will follow up on that theme. I have a question about the broader social benefits that we are supposed to get from procurement changes and improvements, with a focus on reducing inequality. Do we—the Government or whoever—collect data on what contractors and subcontractors are doing and what their supply chains are? Do we know about the environmental and social impacts or whether there is a focus on reducing inequality? Are we collecting the right data? If not, whose responsibility is it to do so? Who can bring all of that together, given what has been said about the burden of bureaucracy and all the administration?

When you say more engagement, with whom? What should the committee recommend?

I will come back to you, Colin, as the question has moved on. Are there any other things that you wish to say in response?

My final question—

I put on record my thanks to all the organisations that have engaged with me over recent weeks or sent in briefings for today’s debate. The work that those organisations and their staff and volunteers do is a vital part of our system of social protection, on which we all rely. I will not manage to address today all the asks in those briefings, but I undertake to keep them in mind in forthcoming discussions about budgets and service deliveries.

For decades now—for the whole of my lifetime—both the idea and the practice of social security have come under cynical and sustained attack. In the UK, they have been undermined by the vicious drip-feed of media myth, made subject to humiliating and often impossible hurdles, and reduced to levels of near and often actual destitution. Too often, even those defending social security have been apologetic and half-hearted. They cannot, it seems, fully withstand those tabloid lies, the constant bombardment of stereotypes and the perpetuation of the deep and damaging stigma that generations now bear.

Social security is not an unfortunate side hustle—a grubby little job to be got out of the way before we begin our important business. It is our important business. It is at the heart of what a responsible Government does and what a responsible Parliament cares about. Why is that?

First, it is a question of justice. The degree of inequality in our society goes far beyond anything that might be explained by natural variations of fortune, aspiration, hard work or talent. It represents deliberate dispossession and the on-going transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. It is a reverse Robin Hood, obscenely celebrated as though the Sheriff of Nottingham were the hero and Maid Marian a woke activist, getting in the way of economic growth. Salaries for the richest have been rising in what Professor Danny Dorling has described as a “spiral of excess”, involving not only bankers and hedge fund managers but those such as university vice-chancellors who once saw their work as a matter of public benefit and the common good.

Faced with such injustice, we should be unashamed in calling for fair redistribution—for the poor to recover what has been stolen from them. Social security is one way in which we can do a small part of that essential rebalancing—a small act of justice and solidarity.

Secondly, it is a question of rights. Among the four freedoms that President Roosevelt set out as the foundations of a post-war world was freedom from want. The social and economic rights that expressed that freedom are integral to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, whose 75th anniversary we celebrated just a couple of months ago. It was a pure political project on the part of capitalist Governments to pretend that those rights were less important than their counterpart civil and political freedoms. It is part of our role to dismantle that project and to restore a dignified and healthy life to the heart of our human rights endeavours.

Thirdly, it is a question of sustainability and of what our shared future will look like. Inequality, as the authors of “The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better” demonstrate, damages our whole society. The traumatic effects of poverty harm not only individuals and families but communities and social structures across time and place. There are huge tasks ahead as we work for a fair, peaceful, unpolluted and thriving Scotland, and we each need the resources and resilience to play our part.

As the motion reflects, we can and, I think, should be proud of what we have done in Scotland, including our record investment in social security, our increased benefits, our respectful approach and our mitigation of Westminster cruelties, but most of all we should be proud of the Scottish child payment, which Professor Danny Dorling has described as

“the single policy intervention that has created the largest fall in child poverty anywhere in Europe for at least 40 years”,

as others have highlighted.

However, we must do more. We must look at all our policies, budget decisions and proposed legislation from the perspective of a child in poverty. We must use the tools that we have and develop those that we need. Participation, transparency, accountability, accurate data and monitored targets all take meticulous work, humility and a willingness to challenge and be challenged. This afternoon’s debate is an opportunity to recommit ourselves to that work and that willingness, and I thank Bob Doris especially for his suggestions and clear proposals for us to consider.

We must continue to call out Westminster’s cruel and vindictive policies, its direct social security decisions, the inhuman two-child limit and the prurient rape clause, and its failures in reserved areas, especially in energy, trade and immigration. Social security that excludes children seeking sanctuary from the worst horrors of the world is neither social nor secure.

We must challenge vested interests that hide their exploitation of the poor behind a cloak of invented inevitability. The reality of the cost of living crisis is that it represents the cost of greed. The new report by Global Justice Now and others, “Taken, not earned: How monopolists drive the world’s power and wealth divide”, shows how huge corporations and their billionaire controllers set exorbitant prices using their effective monopoly power not only to gouge consumers but to strangle the smaller firms on which our communities depend.

Social security, at its best, is the essential oil that keeps our society, our communities and our families working as they should—safe and secure and freed from want to come together in growing our shared future. We are privileged to help to make that a reality.

Thank you, Presiding Officer.

Fergus Ewing raises an interesting point, but to try to bring tenants’ rights into the debate is a bit shy of the mark. We need to ensure that society as a whole supports everybody and that homes are for living in, not for making profit.

People struggling with debt told us in committee that they now get repeated contact from creditors through texts, emails and letters—sometimes every day. Such pressure can only add to their stress and anxiety, even if the communications are not threatening. The incessant demands and pressures have significant negative impacts on people’s wellbeing.

For those and other reasons, the introduction of powers to create a mental health moratorium is very welcome. Having a clear mechanism to ensure that creditors cease diligence proceedings while someone focuses on improving their mental health is necessary. I look forward to further discussions on potentially freezing interest repayment charges, restricting contact from the creditor and the like, and I support calls to include those informal forms of debt enforcement in the moratorium.

As we have heard, the bill is enabling legislation, with details of the mental health moratorium to be determined by regulations that are currently being developed following the conclusion of the recent consultation. I welcome the minister’s commitment to keep the committee informed as regulations are developed, so that we can scrutinise them effectively—and I believe that we will scrutinise them effectively.

A significant area of concern with the moratorium proposal is that eligibility criteria are drawn far too narrowly. We heard from many witnesses and people with lived experience that many people who do not have compulsory treatment orders would benefit from accessing the much-needed support under the moratorium. We have already heard details of alternative approaches that would widen the eligibility criteria, so I will not rehearse those here. I also appreciate that the minister has said that more time is required to analyse the consultation responses on that issue. I hope that we can agree on wider criteria as the bill progresses through its subsequent stages, because I think that there is general agreement—as there certainly was on the committee—on that issue.

Linked to that, I do not agree with the view held by some—it is also the view expressed in the consultation document on the operation of the moratorium—that

“we should start small, make sure the scheme works properly and then consider expanding it once we have sufficient experience under our belts”.

That approach threatens the success of the scheme as a whole. If only a handful of people can benefit from a moratorium because of the tightness of the eligibility criteria, we will not get the evidence or experience that we need and will not understand where the scheme is failing. We do not want the legislation to fall flat at the first hurdle.

Regarding other proposals in the bill, I share the concerns expressed by many about the creation of a public register and the stigma associated with that, so I look forward to receiving further information about that from the minister in due course. I welcome the minister’s commitment to look for an opportunity to amend the stigmatising phrase “severely mentally impaired”. I also echo the calls from financial advice and support organisations, among others, to ensure that front-line debt advisers and mental health professionals get the appropriate specialist trauma-informed training and support required to ensure that they are adequately equipped to support people who are struggling with both mental ill health and debt.

I do not have time to address all the other proposals in the bill.

In closing, I thank the convener and other colleagues on the Economy and Fair Work Committee for the work undertaken on the bill to date. I thank the clerks for pulling together everything that we have discussed, and I look forward to our future discussions of the detail that we have talked so much about today.

We are all well aware that the actions and the decisions that we take can change people’s lives. Some of what we do might seem small and insignificant, and some of the things we do might be small, but they could have significant positive impacts on the lives of a few people. The Bankruptcy and Diligence (Scotland) Bill will do exactly that. In the middle of technical changes to our bankruptcy laws is the potential to make the lives of people who are struggling with debt and poor mental health much more manageable.

On behalf of the Scottish Greens, I welcome the bill and I thank all the individuals and organisations who contributed in various ways to the Economy and Fair Work Committee’s scrutiny of it. I appreciate the consideration and time that have been devoted to helping us to get to grips with the details of the proposals in the bill, and I am especially grateful to those who have challenged us to be bolder and to go further in order to deliver benefits to even more people who are struggling with poor mental health and debt issues.

Like many other members, I will focus my remarks on the provisions relating to the mental health moratorium. Debt has a huge impact on mental health—that was made very clear to us by participants in the evidence session that we held with One Parent Families Scotland and the Poverty Alliance. The personal stories of mental health issues spiralling out of control because of the pressures of debts, alongside other issues associated with family, work, physical health and so on, were emotive and very affecting. As Becca Stacey from the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute said,

“we know that people with mental health problems are three and a half times more likely to be in debt, and that half of the people who are in problem debt are experiencing a mental health problem.”—[Official Report, Economy and Fair Work Committee, 20 September 2023; c 2.]

It is a vicious circle, debt and poor mental health being clearly linked and reinforcing each other.

It is clear that, despite the work that has been undertaken to shift perceptions and the actions that are taken by creditors when dealing with people suffering from mental health issues, some creditors still continue to demand repayments. Common debts are council tax, benefit overpayments, overdrafts and utilities bills. Given the public sector or publicly regulated nature of those things, that is very disappointing. Some creditors insist on on-going payments, even if repayment of the debt is never likely to be complete.

Do you not see that there is a potential impact on some of the broader policy work that we are trying to achieve in Scotland if ISDS clauses remain in place and foreign investors can then sue the Scottish Government over certain policy proposals that it enacts?