Social Isolation and Loneliness

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 29 January 2019.

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Photo of Alex Rowley Alex Rowley Labour

I want to pick up on Sandra White’s comment that she was sorry that the Labour Party criticised the strategy. No Labour member has criticised the strategy today; indeed, we have made it clear that, whether or not our amendment gets support, we will support the Government’s motion, because we have consistently supported the strategy and we have consistently said that loneliness and isolation have a knock-on effect on health, including mental health, and wellbeing. For the avoidance of doubt, we absolutely support the strategy.

What we have said today and what our amendment tries to put forward is that it is really difficult to implement the strategy at the same time as failed austerity is impacting on communities and public services. Many of the organisations that have written in or sent briefings have said that.

I remember quoting the North Ayrshire-based charity Food Train last year. It described the strategy as

“just words on a page”—[

Official Report

, 18 January 2018; c 75.]

without funding for lifeline services. We see that no matter where we go.

The £1 million investment is obviously welcome, but that is against a £300-odd million cut in local authority budgets, the majority of which will lead to cuts in services such as many of those that have been mentioned. Members have talked about the cut to public toilets. They are among the first services to go in many councils, because it is an easy cut to make. Highland Council is the latest council to say that, like Scottish Borders Council and many others, it will cut toilets. Age Scotland and Age UK have produced reports telling us about the devastating impact on older people who go to shopping areas of the failure to have public toilets. Again, that is an issue isolation.

Fife Gingerbread says that it will have to pay off more than 20 workers and that it cannot continue to support 739 families. That is not because of a cut from the council but because, although it had secured project funding through the Scottish Government, the council and other organisations, that project funding is coming to an end. The £1 million spending in the strategy that we have talked about is to fund projects. The problem with funding projects is that, when the money comes to an end, if there is no core funding to support those projects, they will fall and all the good work that is going on will fall with them.

I say to Sandra White and others that there needs to be a bit of reality in respect of the strategy. We can have all the strategies in the world—the Parliament is good at adopting strategies—but, if people do not have the resources to support their implementation, they become meaningless.