SNP and Labour need to take poverty more seriously – or malign actors will profit

There are those seeking to exploiting poverty to drive a wedge between communities

Next year’s Scottish Parliament election will be a massive test of strength for Holyrood. In a time of global instability, with rising extremism at home and abroad, faith in politics is at a very low ebb. Last week’s elections in England have thrown into sharp focus that politics across the UK, including in Scotland, feel like they are at a crossroads.

Whether a long-serving government like the SNP’s in Scotland or Labour’s relatively new one at the UK level, our national governments face great jeopardy from ordinary people rather than their political opponents.

People are tired of being told the same things, hearing the same platitudes and experiencing the same results. In the past, defending the status quo has been a half-decent political strategy – that doesn’t work anymore.

There is no more perfect example of this than poverty levels in Scotland. Poverty hasn’t fallen significantly since the start of the 2000s. People leaving school now would not be any less likely to be in poverty today than they would’ve been the generation before.

READ MORE: 10 ways to make Scotland's politics work for its people

As poverty has deepened for many people, foodbanks have become commonplace across the UK (Picture: Christopher Furlong) | Getty Images

Economic insecurity

While headline poverty rates may have plateaued, the problem is deepening with more people now a long way from the poverty line. This is the catalyst for the explosion in foodbanks, multibanks, even ‘babybanks’.

Austerity has ground down people’s standards of living. And what we have now is scarcity, both within our public services and our household finances. Economic insecurity is bleeding into many households.

Those on the lowest incomes suffer the most. Yes, through a lack of fuel, food and basic comforts but also because they are more likely to be victims of crime or to have to use poor public services.

The scarcity and darkness that this breeds also allows malign actors to drive wedges between people and communities. These negative influences pit people who want nothing more than to be treated fairly against each other. They blame the lack of housing on people seeking refuge from persecution. They never have solutions but know all the tropes about who is deserving and undeserving of support.

READ MORE: Swinney makes payment guarantee to Scottish parents on two-child benefit cap

Eye-watering energy bills

The political debate in Scotland has, to a large extent, managed to avoid some of the most aggressive forms of these arguments but they often bubble beneath the surface. Taken at their most benign, all they offer is more of the same – an unkinder narrative to accompany little change. At their worst, these approaches come with an explosion of misogyny, racism and discrimination against disabled people and ideas that would deepen inequality.

But if we allow this darkness to proliferate, those who seek to divide us will continue to be disproportionately heard. High housing costs, eye-watering energy bills and creaking public services are blamed on people often at the hard end of these problems, rather than on the politicians who have presided over these failures. Like empty rhetoric that delivers little change, stoking these fires of discontent fixes nothing,

The SNP government has maintained a more positive narrative about the need to drive down poverty in our society. They have also taken some action in this space – whether through the introduction of the Scottish Child Payment or a comparatively greater investment in social housing. But sometimes it can feel as if these measures are the summit of their ambition on poverty, when they should be the foothills.

Cross-party agreement

That is why the Scottish Parliament’s stretching child poverty reduction targets are so important. The Bill setting those targets was passed unanimously. Every party is signed up to them. And they dictate the summit of those parties’ ambitions – a Scotland where child poverty would be amongst the lowest rates in the world.

Right now, the parties’ ambitions are not matching people’s expectations. People are screaming out for a decent and affordable home, for a job that they get something out of and can live off of, and for services to be there when we need them. Where childcare, social care and social security is readily available and provides security – in contrast to the financial precarity experienced by many.

We no longer live in a country where a tweak to the status quo will meet people’s expectations. We can no longer accept that the only way for our people to prosper is to make small changes around the margins of how our economy works now.

This problem requires big debates about the level of taxation and other ways in which people can contribute to public services. It requires a recognition that unleashing the entrepreneurial potential of our country is not about protecting the wealth of those who already have it, but providing security for everyone to live a life free from poverty.

A lasting legacy

By addressing these fundamental issues and delivering tangible improvements in people’s lives, we can rebuild trust in our public services and democratic institutions. This requires strong and passionate leadership, with big debates confronted head on, in order to provide positive changes to people’s lives. Leaders can’t meekly complain about “hard choices” that only wind up people who actually have to live with those choices.

The politicians who are celebrated in the UK, love them or loathe them, are the ones who made significant and lasting changes to our society. If, in the next parliament, a politician presides over the meeting of child poverty reduction targets, they will have left a lasting legacy on Scottish society and the doldrums of today will feel like a distant memory.

Satwat Rehman is chief executive of One Parent Families Scotland. Chris Birt is associate director for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation