Families are falling into poverty
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We in the Scottish Labour Party have always held education as the highest priority and had way back in 2007 promised to rebuild every primary school that was required.
Therefore, albeit late in the day, the announcement is very welcome and will benefit future generations. This – along with the new high school, another battle well fought – will make a marked difference to the young people in Wick and the surrounding area.
Still on the theme of young people, I notice that new government regulations mean that playgroups are now classed as schools and will have to pay their £59 disclosure fee for staff members – this is an additional cost for each new member of staff and disclosures need to be checked periodically.
This will only add to the costs of childcare when we are already paying far too much for this in Scotland.
High-quality affordable childcare is not only crucial to young people but it is important also for parents who are working. Those in low-paid jobs will find it increasing uneconomic for them to work and because of this will fall into a poverty trap.
Ending child poverty was again a pillar of Scottish Labour Party policy, and I believe was signed up to by all parties.
However, we see more women out of work; unemployment numbers for women are second only to those for young people.
This is mainly due to the loss of frontline services due to cuts in public spending. Frontline services are predominantly provided by women, often in the areas of elderly care or in education.
This will mean that families will find themselves falling into poverty, and this is an even bigger problem for single-parent families – the majority of which are headed by women.
We cannot lose sight of the goal to end child poverty and these creeping policies appear to be the cause rather than the solution.
A good news story this month is the resolution of the fire brigade proposals to withdraw many services.
I could not believe that this was being proposed, so am delighted that common sense has prevailed.
Representing huge swathes of rural areas, I am only too aware that they are often forgotten for service provision and this would have been a step too far.
