Social Justice

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at 3:35 pm on 15 November 2000.

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Photo of Bill Aitken Bill Aitken Conservative 3:35, 15 November 2000

I would like to think that none of us would be here today unless we genuinely wished to alleviate poverty. We may take different approaches, but surely we share that goal.

I am not certain that the information in the Executive's brochure—which is not glossy, but has a rather fine matt finish—will be of all that much assistance in achieving what we seek to achieve. Fiona Hyslop is quite correct: the brochure is yet another piece of new Labour hype. It is an expensive brochure that contains meaningless and nebulous milestones that disguise the paucity of Executive ideas to deal with Labour's big idea of 1997.

The Minister for Social Justice and Henry McLeish himself wallow in self-congratulation. At the same time, they hide behind a 96-page document, backed up by a further 84 pages of meaningless statistics, which simply shows that the Executive is presiding over the trends of improvement in health and the economy that have been going on for many years. Those improving trends are simply ignored—just as they were when the minister's predecessor, Wendy Alexander, introduced the social justice document last year.

The people of Scotland's disadvantaged areas will not be conned easily by the Executive's year-zero approach to statistics. The success of Labour's social justice strategy can be seen in the soaring numbers of homeless people. The miserable and pathetic figures huddled in the doorways of Glasgow and Edinburgh bear eloquent testimony to the failure of Labour in government to respond to one of the burning issues of our time.

The 96-page document says nothing at length. The figures in the two documents are an appalling indictment of the failure of Labour, before and after devolution, to deal with the pressing issues of homelessness, crime, education and welfare reform. Homelessness has soared to record levels under Labour; rough sleeping is at an all-time high. We have seen dramatic increases in the figures for bed-and-breakfast accommodation being used by homeless families and children.

In response to the former Deputy Minister for Local Government, who does not seem to agree with me, I point out that, under the previous Conservative Government, those figures fell over the years. Despite that, all that the Executive can do is produce, at enormous expense, documents that tell us that everyone is getting better. Who is kidding whom? Scotland's pensioners are not getting better. They will not be kidded by the 75p increase. For many of them, next year's increase will come too late.