What Future for Vulnerable People under Independence?

This month, Green MSPs have welcomed the findings of the Expert Working Group on Welfare. The group makes recommendations for an independent Scotland with control over welfare and this includes re-establishing the link between benefits and the cost of living, scrapping the welfare cap, increasing the carer's allowance and ensuring women are not disadvantaged.

Welfare cuts are having creating misery and hardship for the most vulnerable. The expert group recommendations are in stark contrast to the Coalition's cruel, wrong-headed policies. The social security system shouldn't just be viewed as a safety net but as a way of improving everyone's quality of life.

Under Scottish Independence, Greens would pursue ideas for removing the stigma associated with benefits, and support the development of an independent Scottish social security system that could lift people into better paid, more secure jobs and also, recognise the important unpaid work carried out by carers.

We want a Citizens Basic Income to be considered under Independence, as it would allow everyone to take a fuller and more effective part in the community and the local economy. It could provide a guaranteed, non means-tested, basic income granted to every adult citizen, regardless of whether they are working or not working.

With the introduction of a Citizens Income, the aim would be to remove the ‘poverty trap’ so that people would not end up poorer or no better off in work than out. In addition, we could see an increase in overall employment as part-time jobs that were previously not an option could now be taken on.

A Citizens Income could improve public health, through the stress relief that it would bring. Experience of anxiety and depression, from being on and off benefits, can be addressed. It could lift a damaging level of stress from our society. It’s far more affordable than it sounds as well, as the Citizen’s Income Trust have demonstrated, the cost would work out at roughly the same as the current welfare bill.

Scottish Independence is a means to strengthen Local Democracy. Very clearly there is an urgent need to begin to decentralise power from Edinburgh to communities across Scotland, and many gains to be made in terms of bringing power closer to people so that decisions are made better. Greens are calling for a move towards much smaller units of government that would be able to raise the majority of their funding locally. The aim is to emulate the kind of stronger democracy other European countries such as Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands take for granted.

The discussion comes at a crucial time for Scotland’s communities. Local services are being cut because of reduced central funding and the economic crisis. Council tax has been frozen, disempowering councils from raising revenue. Community councils have little power or funding and coverage is patchy. Participation in local government elections is extremely low.

Scottish Independence can Close the Wealth Gap. The UK has seen a dramatic drift toward a low-tax, low-wage, low-investment economy. It serves only the interests of the wealthiest, and it would be mistake for Scotland to follow this path.

We have to reverse the trend toward ever-lower corporation tax, in the knowledge that most businesses care more about decent infrastructure and a healthy, educated workforce than they do about the more marginal issue of tax levels. We can commit to fairer property and income taxes to end the scandal which sees low earners paying a bigger proportion of their income across the range of taxes than some of the wealthiest.

Fair taxation is only one of the tools we need to build a better society and close the obscene gap between the rich and the rest. Fairer pay is also crucial. Pay ratios of 10:1 would be one way of ensuring that the highest paid don’t lift their own incomes without lifting their colleagues’ at the same time. With a Living Wage guaranteed for all, and an end to the scandal of publicly subsidised poverty pay, we’d start to reverse the years of growing inequality.

As part of Scottish Referendum discourse, there has been healthy debate about the prospect of a written constitution to protect and realise human rights in an independent Scotland. We can seek to ensure there is a collaboratively designed constitution which places equalities issues and the needs of the most vulnerable at the centre of the Scottish Parliament's mandate to govern.

Constitutional processes can lead to progressive provisions for equalities specifically women's rights, as well as the rights of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees. The creation of new institutions, provide the opportunity to embed equalities within our national structures and decision-making processes.

The constitutional debate provides a platform for discussion about social issues and space for equalities organisations to reflect on the possibilities for change that do exist. It is vital that social justice is prioritised and is delivered for marginalised groups as part of the 
constitution. We have to continue to tackle the causes of inequality and discrimination, and seek to achieve a truly just and welcoming Scotland. Greens will make the case that a more equal society is in everyone’s interests, and would make Scotland healthier, happier and safer.

Useful links:  

Scottish Independence Bill: A consultation on an interim constitution for Scotland - http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2014/06/7881

Citizens' Income Trust - http://www.citizensincome.org/