S4M-09225 Poverty (Scotland’s Outlook Campaign)

The Deputy Presiding Officer (John Scott): The final item of business today is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-09225, in the name of James Dornan, on Scotland’s outlook. The debate will be concluded without any questions being put.

Motion debated,

That the Parliament welcomes the launch of Scotland’s Outlook, a joint third sector campaign that aims to raise awareness of the scale and impact of poverty in Scotland; recognises that the campaign uses a weather analogy with the aim of sharing meaningful examples of Scotland’s poverty outlook to inform and educate people about what living in poverty means and to help them appreciate that anyone can find themselves living in poverty; understands that there are 870,000 people living in poverty in Scotland, that a fifth of Scotland’s children are living below the breadline and that poverty is currently the biggest issue for the third sector in Scotland; notes that the Scotland’s Outlook website provides a range of materials to allow people to see the future forecast for poverty and test their knowledge of poverty in Scotland; believes that this campaign, which has been developed by third sector partners including SCVO, Macmillan Cancer Care, Shelter Scotland, Oxfam Scotland, Alzheimer Scotland, CHAS, CPAG and the Poverty Alliance, is an excellent way to highlight the challenge of poverty, and hopes that, as a result of the campaign, more people throughout Scotland, including in Glasgow Cathcart, will understand the realities of poverty and be inspired to get involved in helping to tackle poverty in their communities.

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Stewart Stevenson (Banffshire and Buchan Coast) (SNP): We in the Scottish Parliament and members in Parliaments across the world should remember that we are immensely privileged: we are privileged to be parliamentarians and we are economically privileged. Very few of us will think about the amount of money that we have at our disposal when we undertake any of our day-to-day expenditure. We will be constrained simply by the fact that we do not have quite enough money in our wallet because we did not go to the cash dispenser. Too many families across Scotland do not have the luxury of being able to make the kind of choices that are available to us.

My wife has just filled up our fuel tank after the winter. She has put 1,800 litres of oil in it, the cost of which came to more than £1,000. She could do that without thinking too much about it. Too many families in rural Scotland do not have the opportunity to make the choice to fill their tanks to the brim. They buy in smaller quantities because they have less money. When you buy in smaller quantities, you pay more. As part of that procurement exercise, my wife phoned seven companies. She found that the difference between the top bid and the bottom bid on the fuel for her tank came to around 7p a litre. People who buy small amounts pay substantially more.

My constituency is not one in which the numbers suggest that we have a major problem. In the various areas of my constituency, the percentage of children in poverty ranges from a peak of 17 per cent in Fraserburgh and district to a bottom figure of 8 per cent. Not a single area of Glasgow, including its prosperous areas, has a child poverty figure that is as low as the highest figure in my constituency. The lowest figure for an area of Glasgow is 18 per cent, whereas the highest in my constituency is 17 per cent.

We know that there is huge disparity across Scotland, but in rural areas, which constitute a great deal of my constituency, there is hidden poverty. There are people who live in rural areas where public transport is relatively poor, where fuel oil—an expensive form of heating—is relied on and where children are suffering accordingly.

Some of the figures that are cited in the arguments on poverty are quite staggering. The fact that five families in the United Kingdom—that is the number of fingers on my hand—have the same amount of money as one fifth of the UK’s population shows how skewed the distribution of economic resources is.

If we become disconnected from the concerns of our constituents and the concerns of the poorer people in Scotland, we make poor decisions. I think that there are too many poor parents involved in parliamentary decision making. When I say “poor parents”, I mean parents who outsource their responsibility for the education of their children to schools such as Eton and Harrow. To me, that is poor parenting. The people who come out of that process are not necessarily to be blamed, but they have little understanding of the reality of the lives of too many ordinary people. We need more people who are connected with and grounded in real life to be in a position to make the kind of decisions that will support people.

I congratulate those who have been involved in the launch of the Scotland’s outlook website. As politicians, part of our job is to articulate complex subjects in simple and accessible ways. By presenting the impact of poverty in the form of a weather chart and a simple-to-use website, a familiar model—one that people see on the telly every night—has been used to carry a complex message to a wide audience. I warmly congratulate all the organisations involved—and James Dornan, for bringing the debate to the chamber.

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