The next item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S6M-16536, in the name of Marie McNair, on the impact of UK welfare reforms in Scotland. The debate will be concluded without any question being put. I invite members who wish to participate in the debate to press their request-to-speak buttons.
I make a further plea to those who are leaving the public gallery to please do so as quietly as possible. I invite Marie McNair to open the debate.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament condemns the Labour UK administration for its reported intention to proceed with what it sees as punitive welfare reforms proposed under the previous Conservative administration; notes the calls on the UK Government to immediately reverse its plans, which, it considers, could seriously impact disabled people and increase financial insecurity in vulnerable households; further notes with alarm reports that, by 2029, over 450,000 disabled people and people with long-term conditions across the UK could be impacted as a result of the proposed reforms to Work Capability Assessment, with, it understands, many losing payments currently worth over £400 per month; is deeply concerned by what it sees as the callous language of UK Government ministers when discussing welfare reform, including the reported comment by the UK work and pensions secretary that some benefit claimants are “taking the mickey”; notes what it sees as the contrast between what it considers the demonisation of welfare recipients, under the UK Government, and the Scottish Government’s continued commitment to a devolved social security system based on dignity, fairness and respect; welcomes the reported investment of £1.3 billion above the UK block grant adjustment for social security expenditure in the draft Budget 2025-26, which reflects what it considers to be the social contract between the Scottish Government and the people of Scotland; understands that the Scottish Government is set to invest up to £210 million in measures to mitigate what it sees as UK Government austerity policies such as the so-called bedroom tax, benefit cap and cut to the Winter Fuel Payment in 2025-26, and notes the calls encouraging disadvantaged or low-income households across Scotland, including disabled and long-term ill people in the Clydebank and Milngavie constituency, to check their eligibility for social security payments and to claim the support to which they are entitled.
12:49
I am pleased to have secured today’s debate to discuss the impact of United Kingdom welfare cuts, and I thank all the members who have supported my motion. I also thank Age Scotland for the briefing that it provided.
Today’s debate comes at a very important time. Instead of a change of direction, we have a Government at Westminster that seems intent on making disabled people, children and pensioners the victims of austerity. The biggest lie of any election campaign was the statement, “Read my lips: no austerity.” The Labour Government has declared its intention to proceed with the cruel and inhumane welfare cuts that were proposed by the previous Tory Government. They are cuts that the respected disability charity Scope has described as “catastrophic”. It quotes Naomi who says,
“I feel abandoned by the Government ... It feels like they don’t see disabled people’s needs as important. I don’t think they care, and it makes me feel insignificant.”
Scope is calling for Labour to invest in an equal future for disabled people and not to increase poverty by cutting benefits.
Will the member take an intervention?
I will only take it if I can get the time back, because I am really tight for time.
You will get the time back.
Does Marie McNair accept that an important part of dignity for disabled people is ensuring that disabled people who want to access work can do so. Does she accept that simple premise?
Of course I do. I thank Paul O’Kane for his intervention. However, I thought that you would stand up to apologise for how your party is treating our most vulnerable in Scotland and the wider UK.
Speak through the chair please, Ms McNair.
Instead, Labour plans to proceed, with those on essential social security benefits being an easy target. We should not be surprised by that. Dr David Webster of the University of Glasgow has pointed out that, under the previous Labour Government, benefit sanctions rose to some of their highest levels. The stigmatisation of those on benefits has terrible consequences for individuals and for a fair society in which no one should be left behind.
In its report, “Jumping through hoops”, Independent Age quotes Susan, who described her experience of claiming UK benefits as
“Reducing me to tears and even making me feel suicidal several times. Not only were the questions difficult to understand, dwelling on all of the things that I am no longer capable of doing sent me into a very dark place.”
That is not someone who is looking for a “handout”; it is not someone “gaming the system”; and it is not someone “taking the mickey”.
For an easy political hit, Labour plans to adopt austerity on stilts instead of dignity, fairness and respect. It will hurt real people in my constituency and across Scotland. Under its plans, disabled people will be seriously impacted, and the financial insecurity of vulnerable households will increase. To put that into figures, there are reports that, by 2029, more than 450,000 disabled people and people with long-term conditions across the UK could be impacted as a result of the proposed reforms to the work capability assessment, with many losing payments that are currently worth more than £400 per month. Only yesterday, the BBC reported that
“The Chancellor has earmarked several billion pounds in draft spending cuts to welfare”.
In a 2024 report from the Poverty Alliance in Scotland for its collaborative project with the Scottish Government to assess the impacts of poverty related stigma on benefit take-up—
Will the member give way?
I will not.
The report found that—
Will the member give way?
I have already said that I will not take an intervention.
According to the report:
“Most Panellists agreed that stigma had gotten worse with austerity, UK government’s ‘welfare reform’, and the cost-of-living crisis”,
and
“Several spoke of putting off claiming for as long as they possibly could, to the point of hunger and destitution.”
That is really concerning, and we have heard it so many times in the Social Justice and Social Security Committee. It is up to us to combat the stigma and to change the narrative around benefits. Benefits are a safety net, and they are normal. But Labour is promoting a narrative of the scrounger and the undeserving—I will say this again: please, let us be mindful of the language that we are using.
By contrast, Scotland’s social security system is based on fairness, dignity and respect. The Poverty Alliance’s report highlighted the different approach in Scotland and noted that dealing with Social Security Scotland was viewed as a far less stigmatising experience than dealing with the Department for Work and Pensions. The difference was noted as “night and day”. We will keep going further to protect our constituents who require benefits. That is clear from the budget for 2025-26, which will invest £6.9 billion in social security and is expected to support around 2 million people in 2025-26.
However, although we will continue to do everything that we can to protect those in need, we are continuously hindered by UK austerity measures. The austerity policies of 2010, which were put in place by our Tory and Liberal Democrat colleagues, have led to severe suffering for the Scottish community, particularly those on low incomes. Those policies have been described by economists and economic historians as “disastrous” and “reckless”. The United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights went even further in 2023, condemning the UK Government’s shameful record on poverty, saying that the UK’s “grossly insufficient” welfare system, after a decade of austerity, is “simply not acceptable” and may be in violation of international law.
That reckless approach has resulted in the Scottish Government having to spend a large portion of its budget to counteract those damaging policies to protect the Scottish people. In 2025, the Scottish Government is set to invest up to £210 million in measures to mitigate UK Government austerity policies, such as the so-called bedroom tax, the benefit cap and the cut to winter fuel payments. We will go further by scrapping Labour’s abhorrent two-child benefit cap, which will lift approximately 15,000 children out of poverty.
The Scottish Government’s social security policies are significant, and they are the reason why Scotland is the only part of the UK where child poverty rates are predicted to fall. Under the Scottish National Party, the Scottish Government will continue to value and protect benefit claimants, but only with full control over welfare policies will we be able to truly address poverty and inequality. Therefore, I am calling on my Labour colleagues to push the UK Government to take the right approach and reverse its punitive welfare reform plans. If they do not do that, they can at least call out those plans and support the full devolution of social security and employment policy. Only then will we have a fair and compassionate welfare system that leaves no one behind.
We move to the open debate.
12:56
Marie McNair, I congratulate you on the debate, but that speech was something else. You quote the UN rapporteur in relation to UK welfare—
Speak through the chair.
We spent £350 billion this year on welfare in this country. It is about time that we had an honest debate about welfare. We should be honest. The reality is that too many people in this country are able to work but have chosen not to engage in employment. That is not just an economic crisis but a moral one.
I wanted to speak in the debate because I firmly believe in the ennobling and fulfilling importance of good work. The welfare system was intended to be a safety net—I think that we agree on that. It is not a lifestyle choice. It should support people back into employment and not trap them in dependency.
On the point of morality, does the member acknowledge that disability benefits are not all out-of-work benefits? Does he realise the impact that cutting those welfare payments to disabled people would have on their ability to stay in work and to feed and clothe themselves?
Therefore, the system should be geared around helping people to stay in work and to have as much self-reliance and independence as possible, but we should not be designing systems that trap people in dependency.
According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, UK welfare spending this year is—as I have already mentioned—£350 billion. It is spiralling unsustainably, and reaching levels that even a Labour Government has acknowledged cannot continue.
In 2025-26, the Scottish Government intends to spend £1.3 billion more than the UK block grant adjustment on social security, with further increases anticipated. Despite repeated requests, notably from the Finance and Public Administration Committee, the Government has yet to outline a sustainable long-term funding plan—maybe the minister is going to conjure one out of her speech at the end of this debate. The SNP’s proposal to remove the two-child benefit cap would add at least another £200 million a year just to start with. None of that expenditure has been properly accounted for.
The welfare system that we have created is not financially sustainable, and there is no point in pretending otherwise. I welcome the acceptance across the parties that we need to reduce the number of people dependent on welfare. A successful Government sets goals to cut the number of people on welfare, not to increase it. The SNP’s approach is not compassionate. It is cruel, because it is designed to keep people stuck where they are, instead of to help people to move forward.
We need to rebalance our economy. Alongside the welfare crisis, we have too many people working for the Government, while the private sector—our best source of new jobs—struggles. We must extend the tax base by making more people self-reliant—as they would desire to be—and less dependent on the state. We should be investing in skills, training and apprenticeships, yet, under the SNP, the opposite is happening: cuts to further education, an artificial cap on apprenticeships and a lack of investment in upskilling.
That is a failure of ambition for Scotland. What a strange nationalist party we have in government that it lacks such ambition for our people.
We must also be mindful of working people, who should not be left feeling that their hard-earned money is being used to fund people who are capable of working but who are choosing not to. We need to create the conditions for the creation of good work.
Work must always pay. We must help people to feel that they have an opportunity to upskill, to make choices for themselves and to increase their capability to earn and to provide for their families. Instead of being penalised by punitive taxes, people should be encouraged to work and have ambition. Aspirations should be rewarded, not punished. We need a Government that believes in work, self-reliance and growth.
13:02
I want to try to be generous to Marie McNair, but I would describe the motion and the debate as unserious. I say that because we are debating a motion that seeks to discuss proposed reforms to UK social security payments that have not, in fact, been announced and the detail of which none of us has seen. The proposals have appeared publicly in the press in a way that I think the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice referred to in the Social Justice and Social Security Committee this morning as “rumours”.
It is important that we look at the context of where we are right now.
To be fair to Marie McNair and the motion, is it not the Labour Government’s intention to cut the welfare bill by helping people back into work?
I have just said that there are reforms that have not yet been consulted on. It is the Labour Government’s intention to ensure that people who want to work can access work and are supported to do so. I will say more about that in my speech.
It is important to deal in the facts about what seven months of a UK Labour Government have meant for those issues. There is no mention in the motion of the changes that have been made, such as the fair repayment rate on debt, which means that 110,000 Scottish households will be, on average, £420 a year better off because of our universal credit reforms.
There is no mention of the changes to the earnings threshold for carers allowance to allow unpaid carers to earn more while they keep their entitlements. That is the biggest change to carers allowance since 1974 and a move that the Scottish Government took weeks to confirm that it would follow.
There is no mention of the changes to statutory sick pay that were announced this week, which mean that 1.3 million of the lowest paid Britons can access sick pay from day 1 of their sickness, and that they do not have to choose between their health and earning a living. That goes alongside the UK Employment Rights Bill, which I will speak about in my contribution.
From reading the motion and listening to the opening speech in the debate, members would think that Social Security Scotland is completely flawless in this space. However, the roll-outs of adult disability payment and child disability payment have involved significantly higher processing times than their DWP equivalents have. Tragically, in 2023 alone, almost 100 people died while they were waiting for their ADP applications to be approved. More than £1 million of social security overpayments will not be recovered, which creates an unnecessary fiscal pressure. There have been significant issues setting up the agency, including a £39 million spend on information technology systems and a low staff occupancy rate at its Dundee headquarters, which has annual running costs of £1.5 million.
As the motion highlights, the spend on social security above the block grant adjustment is ever rising, which puts pressure on tax receipts in Scotland and other spending portfolios. At this morning’s meeting of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee, the cabinet secretary acknowledged—perhaps for the first time—that there is pressure on the budget and that the implications are “stark”.
I make it clear that it is legitimate for such decisions to be taken in this Parliament. My party, as the party that founded this Parliament, supports the principle of the devolution of decision making, but we cannot escape the fact that we must have a discussion about how we pay for such things. I called the debate unserious because we are not having that discussion and it is not mentioned in the motion. We must have an open and honest discussion about the purpose of social security and how we can ensure that people get the right support to get into work and to arrive at true and meaningful positive destinations.
I am happy to try to inject some nuance into the debate by saying that the positive steps that I have outlined that the Labour Government has taken so far must be coupled with further reform work. That is why the reform of universal credit and the UK Government’s on-going review are so important. Any changes that are made, especially those that relate to people who are in receipt of sickness benefit or who are disabled, must be geared towards investment in ensuring that people can be supported into work. Just this morning, the DWP and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions announced that 1,000 extra job coaches will be deployed in the jobcentre network to support people to get into work. Such interventions will be crucial.
I am happy to acknowledge that many challenges exist across the variety of issues that contribute to poverty in our country, but we must have a serious, grown-up and nuanced debate about how we can tackle all those facets through the social security system and access to work. It is clear to me that members of the Government party have no intention of doing that today.
13:06
I thank Marie McNair for securing this important debate, which emphasises the detrimental impact that the UK welfare system is having on society’s most vulnerable.
At the outset, I want to touch on a couple of Stephen Kerr’s comments. He said that the SNP’s approach is not compassionate but cruel. He also spoke about the cutting of apprenticeships and the lack of upskilling, and he highlighted the idea that work must always pay. When Stephen Kerr’s party took control at Westminster in 1979, many communities, including mine in Inverclyde, were absolutely decimated because of the Government’s cruel approach. Apprenticeships were culled and there was a lack of upskilling, because the introduction of the youth training scheme—the YTS—to replace apprenticeships did not upskill people.
Stuart McMillan deflects from my comments by referring to events that took place 44—no, 46—years ago. He must reflect on the fact that it is desperation on his part to reach back so far to deflect from the valid criticisms that are being made by many outside the Parliament about the SNP Government’s lack of commitment to skills training and further education.
I am sorry, Mr Kerr, but the fact is that my community has still not fully recovered from the decimation—[Interruption.]
Please speak through the chair.
My community has not fully recovered from the decisions that were taken by Mr Kerr’s party in 1979. The same is true of Marie McNair’s community and the communities of other members of the Parliament.
The policy positions that were adopted under consecutive Westminster Governments are the polar opposite of how benefit support should work—it should lift people up when they need a helping hand, rather than make life harder for them. I am therefore pleased that, in Scotland, we have taken a different approach through Social Security Scotland. I recognise what Paul O’Kane said about the challenges that exist, which clearly must be worked on, but the principles of dignity, fairness and respect are at the heart of the organisation.
I will give an example. The Scottish child payment is unique to Scotland. Currently, the payment is worth £26.70 per week per eligible child but, following the passing of the budget last week, it will increase to £27.15 per week from 1 April. Since the Scottish child payment was established in 2021, more than £17 million has been paid out to assist families in my Greenock and Inverclyde constituency, benefiting 5,360 children as of December last year and demonstrating the SNP Government’s commitment to putting more money into people’s pockets. That is in stark contrast to the operation of the DWP, which seems to be tasked with finding any reason to deduct money from people’s benefits.
I will touch on some elements of a case that my office has been dealing with.
Will the member accept an intervention?
I am sorry, but I am short of time.
I am not going to reveal the constituent’s name or much of their case, but that individual approached me for support due to rent arrears. Numerous personal circumstances, many of which were outwith my constituent’s personal control, had led to them falling behind on their rent, but they had agreed a repayment plan with the DWP. The DWP then penalised my constituent for missing an appointment, which, once again, was for reasons outwith their control. The penalty was that they got no universal credit payments for 80 days.
As I said, I will not go into all the details, and my constituent accepts that they have made mistakes along the way, but I fail to see how that approach achieves anything other than making people feel more vulnerable. For my constituent, that almost resulted in eviction, at which point other services had to step in to provide support. I firmly believe that, if the DWP had employed a more caring and person-centred approach, staff might have identified the acute challenges that my constituent was facing. Instead, the modus operandi is to treat people with suspicion rather than view them as human beings in need of help.
I imagine that colleagues across the chamber will have experience of similar actions from the DWP, but whether they consider that to be a horror story depends on their point of view. It is abundantly clear to me that the UK welfare system is not fit for purpose, and I echo Marie McNair’s comments about benefits being devolved to this Parliament. I consider that for Labour to come into power and adopt the Tories’ cruel and callous so-called reforms and, in some cases, to perpetuate them further, is an utter betrayal.
I again thank Marie McNair for bringing the debate to the chamber.
The final speaker in the open debate is Maggie Chapman, who joins us remotely.
13:12
I thank Marie McNair for securing this important debate. Her motion reflects an alarm that I believe is shared by a great many members of the Parliament, although not all might be able to express it.
The continuation of Tory policies by a Labour Government is, of course, not new, but the speed and scale with which Sir Keir Starmer has sloughed off his former principles is both breathtaking and terrifying. Perhaps the idea, in line with the mantra of the brotocracy, is to move fast and break things, but if the things that are broken are the welfare state, the social security system and the social contract of which the motion speaks, is that really a price worth paying for the illusion of any growth, either benign or malignant?
Marie McNair is right to identify the policies as those of austerity, whether or not the Labour Government uses that word. Like the policies of the previous UK Government, those policies have, or threaten to have, a threefold impact on Scotland. First, they impose direct harm on individuals, families and communities: the harms of poverty, anxiety, exclusion and stigma. Many of our constituents know those harms intimately, as they are their constant companions through days of desperation and nights of sleepless fear.
Secondly, by the nature of the so-called devolution settlement, those policies make the creation of alternatives much more difficult. Financial and constitutional barriers corral us into doing what Westminster does, however much our instincts rebel.
Thirdly, and most perniciously, the ideology of austerity makes the alternatives hard to express and even to imagine. It is an ideology of punishment, not for what people do but for what they are—for their bodies and homes and for their failure to get themselves born into greater comfort. The only release is through what is called striving—not for a better future but for a fuller bank account, and not for the common good but for the private and to build walls that keep the world outside.
I believe that our shared responses must confront all three of those impacts. First, we must continue to extend and deepen our work of creative mitigation, finding ways, even within our current confines, that can protect those who are most in need and prevent the greatest harms. I am grateful that, in some limited ways, we are able to do some of that work in Scotland.
Secondly, we must not lose sight of the horizon of our progress towards greater agency. For most of us who are speaking in the chamber this afternoon, that horizon means Scottish independence—the freedom to shape a future that more closely embodies our values.
Thirdly, we must urgently articulate those values. Vulnerability is not a defect to be cured by bullying and deprivation; it is a universal human condition that is masked only by a privileged few for a few years of pretended autonomy. We depend upon one another. We depend upon the earth. We depend upon care, compassion and creativity, upon sustainability and solidarity. Those are our sources of growth and of roots, as well as fruit and flowers. We can and should be proud to speak of them.
The motion that we are debating is about welfare cuts, but it could have been about immigration policy, Gaza or the plan to ravage UK aid commitments to fatten the defence budget, shamelessly turning ploughshares into swords. In each of those situations, the same pattern appears. There is the same betrayal of those with least and the same refusal to acknowledge our shared vulnerability. For it is only together that we are resilient and only together that we are human. We can and should do so much more to express that humanity for everyone.
13:16
I thank Marie McNair for bringing this debate to the chamber. I have listened carefully to the comments that have been made and I hope to respond to some of the points that have been raised.
Any one of us might find ourselves at any time in our lives unable to get paid work due to sickness or disability or because we are caring for a loved one. If that happens, social security should provide us with a safety net. It should provide protection from poverty and financial insecurity no matter what life has thrown at us. That is what social security should be.
However, what we are seeing from the current UK Government, ahead of the publication of its green paper later this month, raises significant concerns for the future of that social security safety net. When the previous UK Government initially set out proposals for changes to the work capability assessment, the Scottish Government, along with poverty campaigners and disabled people’s organisations, roundly condemned the targeting of vital benefits that support disabled people and those with long-term health conditions. It is deeply disappointing that the current UK Government is continuing with those plans.
With reference to Paul O’Kane’s intervention, I know that this is a very uncomfortable space for Labour. Although the reforms originated with the previous Conservative Government, Labour has defended them. In fact, at the judicial review it was found that the consultation on the reforms was based on the need to save money as opposed to getting people back into jobs. The UK Government is now reconsulting, and we will see the results of that reconsultation in the green paper that is meant to be forthcoming.
As Marie McNair points out in her motion, the UK Government’s language when discussing disabled people and people with long-term health conditions is deeply concerning, as it seeks to further stigmatise and blame the sick and disabled for accessing social security benefits that they are legally entitled to and on which they rely.
In Scotland, we know that there is a different way to deliver social security. As a devolved nation, we are able to do that, as Maggie Chapman pointed out. The Scottish Parliament unanimously created the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018, which enshrines the principles of dignity, fairness and respect, reducing poverty, and advancing equality and non-discrimination at the heart of a radically different social security system. As Stuart McMillan so eloquently pointed out, we must retain compassion at the heart of any social security system, and those are the principles that guide this Government’s social security decision making.
While the UK Government is focused on reducing the amount of money that is spent on supporting the disabled and others who need help, the Scottish Government believes that social security is an essential collective investment in Scotland’s people, its communities and its future. It is an investment because, as we all know, inequality is bad for our health, our communities and our economy.
In the recently passed budget, the Scottish Government made a conscious decision to invest in social security for the people of Scotland by investing around £6.9 billion in benefits and payments for 2025-26. That investment will support approximately 2 million people and amounts to around £1.3 billion more than the funding for social security that was received from the UK Government.
In Scotland, we are taking a positive and compassionate approach to delivering the adult disability payment. That approach is ensuring that more disabled people get the support to which they are entitled while making sure that accessing that support is as straightforward as possible. In 2025-26, we will invest around £3.6 billion in the adult disability payment, which is £314 million more than we are forecast to receive from the UK Government through the social security block grant adjustment.
We are also using our limited budget to mitigate some of the UK Government’s most damaging policies. Over the past 14 years, we have spent around £1.2 billion on mitigating the effects of policies such as the bedroom tax and the benefit cap, including almost £154 million in 2024-25. Furthermore, from 2026, we will mitigate the effects of the pernicious two-child cap, thereby helping to keep thousands of children out of poverty and reducing the depth of poverty that many more face.
The minister mentions the numbers in the 2025-26 budget—the £1.3 billion more that is being spent over what has been allocated through the block grant. Would she share with members in the chamber exactly how the Government plans to fund its proposed exponential increases in spending in this area?
Would she also accept that the Government should perhaps set its sights on creating jobs and helping people who are currently on benefits to move into work? That never seems to be part of anything that ministers say in this place when it comes to the welfare system. The whole point of the welfare system for many, if not most, people is to help them temporarily while they get back into good work. Why does the Government never talk about that?
Sustainability of budgeting and work—what is the minister’s response to that?
I can give you the time back, minister.
Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, for giving me the time back for Mr Kerr’s lengthy intervention.
I do not accept that this Government does not support people getting into work. We have a raft of investments in ways to do that.
This debate is uncomfortable both for the Tories and for Labour because their approach to welfare benefits is based on punishment and stigma, and this Government rejects that approach whole-heartedly.
Despite the fixed budgets and limited powers of devolution, we have transformed social security provision in Scotland and we are committed to ensuring that finances remain on a sustainable trajectory. We will publish our next medium-term financial strategy later this year, alongside a fiscal sustainability delivery plan.
In conclusion, as I and many members in the chamber have highlighted, the recent statements by UK Government ministers on welfare reform and benefit cuts show no regard for the reality of people’s lives. I will close the debate with a clear and urgent message to the UK Government: remember your pledge of no austerity; do not punish those who most need our help; recognise the hardships that mean that people may require help from the benefits system; and join us, in the Scottish Government, in working to banish stigma from social security rather than amplifying it through aggressive soundbites and rhetoric.
13:25 Meeting suspended until 14:30.Air ais
First Minister’s Question TimeAir adhart
Covid-19 Day of Reflection