Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 25 February 2020.
Given that the move to provide access to free period products is grounded in tackling poverty and gender inequality, I will be very proud to support the general principles of the bill tonight. I look forward to hearing more from both the cabinet secretary and Ms Lennon about how we can all work together to iron out the issue of deliverability.
These days it is fashionable to label the consequences of poverty. We have food poverty, fuel poverty, funeral poverty and, at the heart of today’s debate, period poverty. However, at the end of the day, the grinding struggles and indignity of living with low or no income, of navigating one’s way through a punitive benefits system or of paying over the odds for rent and heat is just plain, old-fashioned poverty.
If we are to end poverty—irrespective of how it might be labelled—folk need to have enough money to live on, and they also need not to be ripped off over their essential living costs.
I want to put the period poverty debate in the broader context of ending poverty in this country, given that everyone in the Parliament unanimously supported legislative targets to do so. It is not easy for any Government to end poverty—indeed, as yet, no United Kingdom Government has met that challenge. With devolution, there can be different choices, albeit that, sometimes, those are limited and come with strings attached.
Consequently, we need to be forensically clear about which actions and investments will lift people out of poverty by dealing with its causes and, in contrast, which ones will address only its consequences. To meet our targets to end child poverty, the overall thrust of our endeavours and investments must be to lift families and young people out of poverty. The overall thrust of the bill, as it is currently drafted, is to address the consequences and not the causes of poverty, because it will not reduce the growing numbers of people who live in it. Nonetheless, supporting the bill is the right thing to do, because, quite simply, it aims to makes life more bearable, protect dignity and reduce inequality.
However, if we are to progress with the bill—which I hope we will do—we will need to do so with our eyes wide open and acknowledge the challenges that, together, we will need to face. For example, the bill’s financial memorandum attributes a cost of nearly £10 million per annum to the scheme, but the Scottish Government estimates it to be £24 million. The reality is that we do not really know, because there are still so many questions to answer about the final scheme.
However, more fundamental questions concern where the money should come from and who should pay. What I am about to say might alienate half of the Government, but I will say it nevertheless. I do not want to see our Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Local Government being forced to make a choice between addressing period poverty or feeding hungry weans, or our Cabinet Secretary for Social Security and Older People having to take money from hard-pressed families or disabled people, or our Minister for Local Government, Housing and Planning having less to invest in warm, affordable homes. Therefore we all need to help ministers to protect the budget lines that tackle poverty, which might mean our accepting reductions elsewhere.
It is to the Government’s credit that it did not sit back and wait for legislation on this subject to be introduced; instead, since 2017 it has invested £15 million in a wide range of world-leading activity that is now reaching half a million people.
I concede that I have an attachment to the issue from my time in the Government, when I took the ball from public health and kicked it on to the park as a gender equality and poverty issue. I have to say that, in large part, I did so because of lobbying by Gillian Martin and Monica Lennon. From my experience at that time, I also know that issues of deliverability are genuine. Measures that we might imagine to be comparatively simple—such as voucher schemes—are hideously complex and costly to implement.
If we focus collectively on principles and pragmatism, we can get the bill into shape for stages 2 and 3. In saying that, I mean absolutely no disrespect to Monica Lennon. It is not always easy to put rights into practice and deliver them in the real world. However, we have learned much from the successful Aberdeen pilot and the initial scheme’s implementation in schools, colleges, universities and community settings. Giving local authorities, voluntary organisations and other partners the flexibility to deliver the best local solutions will be key to meeting our national priorities.
The best argument for the bill is that it could lock in and build on the progress made thus far. Although it will be a magnificent moment—or, as Ms Lennon put it, a “pioneering” one—when Scotland becomes the first country in the world to pass such legislation, I want us to keep close to our hearts the women who most need such support, including those with medical conditions such as endometriosis.
There is a strong argument for our national health service, as well as local government, being part of any statutory framework—if it is good for the goose, it is good for the gander.
We need to keep close to our hearts the 320,000 women of menstruating age who live in poverty after they have paid housing costs, because we are reaching only 11 per cent of such women now. The barometer of our success should, at its core, be how we support those women with the consequences of poverty.