Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 25 February 2020.

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Photo of Neil Findlay Neil Findlay Labour

I will take that point for the record. When that came out in the past week, we knew that opposition to the bill had evaporated.

I believe that universal provision, funded by progressive taxation, is the best way to provide public services. No one who saw “I, Daniel Blake” could fail to be moved by Katie’s plight, when she was forced to steal sanitary towels from her local shop because of her poverty.

If we claim to be a civilised society, we should not have people resorting to such levels of indignity.

Maybe when we pass the bill, we can move on to eradicating food and fuel poverty and, ultimately, homelessness. We would then really become a civilised society.

Arguments have been made today that the bill is just so complicated, that we will never be able to do this—that we will have to work so hard to do it. We have a universal health service, universal education and universal benefits, we provide universal baby boxes and free prescriptions, and we can put men and women on the moon—yet people are suggesting that, somehow, this is just all too difficult. It is not all too difficult. We can easily—